


Broken Things

by BairnSidhe



Series: That kid from Brooklyn [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Brainwashing, Disassociation, F/M, Gen, Healthy Polyamory, I may be going to writer hell, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Sequel, Sexiness and violence, Watching from the sidelines kinda sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:28:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 57,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Karen Rogers cope with the destruction of SHIELD and the search for a long lost best friend.</p><p>Sequel to Secret Bit of Right From Wrong</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Call to Action

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! We're starting another journey today, isn't it exciting?
> 
> Just so you know, this story is the sequel to Secret Bit of Right From Wrong, and if you haven't read that, this will...not make much sense. Also, we're starting in the middle of the events of Winter Soldier, after Steve has escaped the Triskelion but before he reaches the hospital.
> 
> Much thanks to GalahadsGurl and quadrad, who have been beta-ing for me. Additional shout out to the one without whom these stories would not exist, Otaku330 from AFF.

Several months after Steve and Karen returned from their honeymoon, Karen received a very strange call to their apartment in Brooklyn.  The number was a Washington D.C. area code, but not the number for the apartment Steve kept there for when his S.H.I.E.L.D. obligations kept him overnight.

“Hello?”

“Honey, I need you to pack a bag… nothing too heavy…just a change of clothes, your medicine, and anything that you absolutely cannot live without.  Then I need you to get on a train or a bus, and get out of town,   Don’t use the credit cards to buy your ticket.  Don’t use them at all.  Don’t go to your family or to the Avengers.  And do _not_ call Cate.”  Karen didn’t pause as she walked briskly into their bedroom to grab the black backpack she already had packed with a set of clothes.  Keeping it was a habit from a childhood on the run that she’d never broken.  However, she did have many questions as to why her husband thought she needed it was worrying.

“Steve, you’re scaring me.  Why do I need to pack a go-bag and get out of town?  And why can’t I go to Avengers Tower or call my sister?”

“They’ll be looking for you, so you shouldn’t go places they expect you to go.  I don’t think that Cate’s a part of it, but I don’t know.  Do you remember those phones that Dr. Foster and Tony worked up during that cyber-attack that interrupted our third date?” 

Of course she remembered the bulky things.  They had every possible failsafe that could exist in them, rendering them the size and weight of small bricks.  Steve’s had stopped a bullet that was headed to his heart, but the other one worked just fine. “Yeah, they’re gathering dust in the front closet in the box with the solid-holo shield Tony gave you last Christmas.  What is this about, baby?”

“Take the one that works with you.  I’ll call as soon as I can.  I wish I had a good explanation for you, and hopefully the thing I’m going to pick up has answers.  I’m almost there now… I love you.  Stay off the streets as much as you can.”

“Steve!  Don’t you dare leave me in the dark!  What’s going on to get you like this?”  The words she heard then chilled her to the bone.

“Fury is dead and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s been compromised.”

“Fuck.”

“I love you, stay safe.  If something happened to you….”

“You save the world, babe.  I save myself.  That’s our breakdown, remember?  I love you too.  And the staying safe goes double for you.  Call me when you get a chance.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The backpack a heavy weight hanging from her shoulders, Karen made her way down a crowded stairway to the subway.  She didn’t think anyone had followed her, and it was unlikely she would be recognized.  She had stayed out of the spotlight as much as is humanly possible when dating (and subsequently marrying) a superhero.  Just in case, she also had a Dodgers cap pulled down to cover her face. 

Once on the subway, she sat in a corner, pulled out a book and used it to disguise her face further, while surreptitiously scanning the rest of the compartment.  There was a nun, two businessmen, a gaggle of skate punks,  no one who looked particularly threatening at first look.  At the next stop the businessmen got off, and a trio of men with the bearing of fighters got on.  She sunk down lower in her seat and lifted the book just a little higher.  Using instincts honed on the streets, Karen analyzed the men.

The tallest of the three had a rough, puckered scar on his arm, barely exposed by the short sleeves of his tight tee shirt.  His eyes were beady and mean.  High threat, she decided.  If that one got you, he’d have fun hurting you.  In her head, Karen named him Scar.

Next to Scar in height was a skinnier kid, who looked too young to drink.  His red-brown hair was worn slightly longer than his two companions, and even though he was clearly a fighter, she assessed him as medium to low threat.  In her head she designated him Kid.

The shortest of the three was also the burliest.  His jaw was slung out with a massive under bite and he reminded her of a bulldog.  His big beefy hands had the swollen knuckles of a boxer and he was missing part of an ear.  Even with his intimidating demeanor, she pegged him as less of a threat than Scar.  This man would be more straightforward, far less sadistic.  Which didn’t mean he wasn’t more of a threat than Kid though.  She was still contemplating what to call him when he spoke to Scar.

“What did Rumlow say we needed to bring her in for again, Sir?”

“The girl may have valuable information, Carpowski.  Rumlow and Mr. Peirce want her brought in for questioning.”  Carpowski didn’t seem satisfied by that answer, but he didn’t speak again. 

Fortunately for Karen, but unfortunately for them, the skate punks looked like they were about to come down with a terminal case of stupid, eyeing the three older, obviously more fight-ready inhabitants of the compartment.  Finally, the leader of the punks psyched himself up and started badgering Scar as the car pulled to a halt at a station.  Karen ducked out as the three men’s attention was on Scar twisting the punk leader’s arm out of its socket.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The unfortunate side effect of ducking out when she had a chance was that the station where she got off was not where she wanted to be.  She recognized the signs; the boarded up windows, the smell of unwashed bodies, the gang tags on alley walls.  This was not a neighborhood that would be kind to the weak.  Frankly, she was in a terrible situation; it was obvious she wasn’t destitute enough to blend into this area, but at the same time she didn’t look threatening.  She looked like a soft target.  At least she was wearing clothes she could run in.

She adjusted her ball cap down over her brow and laced her keys through her fingers.  She walked like she had a place to be, a place there would be people expecting her.  There were a few close calls with kids who looked  too young to be in gangs, but knowing what to look for helped her cross the street before getting rolled.  Ordinarily she would have tossed them a few dollars and told them to go get food, but right now she needed that cash herself, the knowledge that she couldn’t use her credit cards drumming in the back of her mind.

She was in better shape than she had been before taking Aikido, but hiking all the way to the train station in Manhattan in one go wasn’t something she wanted to do.  Nor did she want to get back on the subway.  One instance of almost getting caught with no way to escape was enough.  In the end, with a hot spot on her foot forcing her to stop anyway, she ducked into a bar.  Looking around, she realized that she was in a much better area than when she’d first left the subway, because there was about a block worth of parking taken up by very nice-looking motorcycles;knowing Steve’s love for his motorcycle, Karen know that there was no way in hell someone would have parked bikes like this in the worst part of Brooklyn.

The interior of the bar was dark and she took a moment to let her eyes adjust, before she slid into a back booth.  She kept her backpack close to her in case she had to run, but she felt at least marginally safe in that knowledge that this was going to be somewhere most people would never think to look for her.  A waitress in denim short-shorts and a white baby doll tee with the name of the bar on it took her order, and went back the way she came.

Karen sipped her beer slowly, giving herself time to rest before moving on.  While she sat, she tried to decide where to go.  It would have to be somewhere big enough to get lost in, but small enough to have minimal S.H.I.E.L.D. presence.  But there was S.H.I.E.L.D. presence everywhere.  Her sister had been recruited in one of the tiny, bumfuck-nowhere town in Missouri.  As the list of places she might go shrank to almost nowhere, her heart rate spiked.  She was about to give in and have a full scale panic attack when a familiar figure slid into the booth across from her - the short, bulldog-like man from the subway, the one the had called Carpowski.  Karen slid out of the booth and was about to make a run for it when Scar blocked her escape.

“Now, now, Mrs. Rogers, what’s the hurry?  We haven’t had a chance to get to know one another.  Take a seat, relax, you’re just catching up with some friends of your husband’s, after all.”

Karen’s eyes narrowed as she hissed, “You’re no friend of Steve’s; his friends don’t chase his wife across Brooklyn.  And Steve’s friends especially don’t dislocate the shoulders of dumb kids for no reason.” 

“Fair enough,” he laughed.  “So maybe I’m not friends with Steve, but I’d sure like to be friends with you.”  Scar lifted his had to touch her face and Karen slapped it away harshly before it touched her.  He looked shocked for a moment then his face contorted and he grabbed her roughly by the chin, shoving her head back sharply.  “That wasn’t so friendly, Mrs. Rogers.”

“Get your hands off me, you son of a bitch!” 

She attempted to slam her heel down on his instep, but his boots were too thick and the angle was off.  Digging her nails into his wrist, she squirmed to get away.  Unfortunately, a few years of Aikido wasn’t much of a match for a fully trained member of the STRIKE team.  She was almost out of hope when a heavyset biker came up behind Scar with a baseball bat and cracked it across the bastard’s head.  Falling to the floor with him, Karen rubbed her jaw and wondered how many showers it would take to feel clean again.

Carpowski had gotten up to deal with the biker with the bat, but had soon found himself facing a muscular woman holding a shotgun.  Blurrily, Karen recognized her as the one who had been tending the bar.  The other bikers from around the bar had come to back up their compatriots with fists and beer bottles and in one case, a switchblade.

“Get the hell outa my bar, asshole,” the woman with the gun growled.  “And take your scumbag friend with you.  We don’t allow fuckers like him in here.”  For a moment Carpowski looked like he was torn between complying and trying to fight a bar full of angry bikers just to prove he could.  Then something shifted in his eyes and he turned to face Karen.

“He should never have done what he did, ma’am, it was beyond orders.  We’ll be going now, but if you want my advice, you should probably get out of here too.  Mr. Pierce will just send us back with Rumlow leading a larger force.”  Kneeling slowly, he slung Scar’s arm over his shoulders, hoisting his teammate to his feet.  Scar roused slightly, just enough to bear some of his own weight as Carpowski walked him out of the bar.

The muscular woman propped the gun on her shoulder and put a hand out to help Karen up from the floor.  “You alright there, Honey?”

“I’m going to need like a million showers before I feel clean again, but I’ll live.  Thank you for coming to my rescue like that.”

“Ain’t a problem, Honey.  I’m Rhapsody… this is Chief.  We run this bar.”  The burly biker smiled a sweet little smile and put his arm around Rhapsody’s waist.  The other bikers were backing off from the scene of the confrontation, but not before they each bestowed a kind smile on Karen too.  Three of them came through the crowd, a girl who looked like a teen and two heavily tattooed, “Hell’s Angels”-types.  “This is Angel, Big Mike and his partener Gnasher.  They used to run with us back in the day, before Chief’s heart got rough and we decided to retire.  They’re like family to us.”

Angel bounded forward with a grin and cheerful chirp. “Hi!  You’re going to be ok now, Honey.  Mama Rhapsody’s adopted you, so anybody who wants to take you down or hurt you has to go through all of us, first.”

“Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but how old are you?  If you “ran with” them “back in the day”…” 

The girl laughed a throaty laugh and punched Karen in the arm lightly.  “I’m a biker brat; I was raised by the crew.  When Mama Rhapsody and Chief retired and the crew broke up I moved in with Dad and Pops.”  In turn she pointed to Gnasher and Big Mike.

“Ok.  Um, look, I’m really glad you all stepped up to protect me, and it’s not that I’m not graeful, but you have no clue who you just messed with.  S.H.I.E.L.D.’s got too many people and if they decide to raze the place trying to get me, a bat and a sawed-off aren’t going to stop them.  I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“While that’s real big of you Honey, we’re not just going to dump you off on the side of the road,” Rhapsody said with a fox-like grin.  “At least let us find you a place to lay low while you plan how to get out of whatever bad you’ve gotten into.”

“We could call Patch, see if he’s willing,” Gnasher said with a surprisingly gentle voice.  “He’s done this sort of thing before.”

“Good idea.  My book’s in the safe in my office, Chief; you go on and make the call.  Gnasher, can you tend bar for a while?”  The man nodded, earning a smile as Rhapsody turned to his partner.  “ Big Mike, you stand near the door and let us know if we need to get her into the basement.  As for you, Honey, you go on and sit back down; Angel and I will keep you company till Patch gets here.”

The wait gave Karen a chance to relax and Rhapsody and Angel were good about not mentioning when she started to shake from released tension.  Angel started telling the story of how she had wound up on the road with her two gay dads and Rhapsody explained the hilarious looks on people’s faces when the crew had rolled in with a kindergartener in the sidecar of Gnasher’s huge Harley hog. 

Karen was laughing along with the two women when a blessedly familiar voice interrupted them.  “Karen?  Kid what the hell are you doin’ here?”

Snapping her head up, Karen looked at her friend with disbelief.  “Logan? Thank God.  I…I don’t know how much I can say… I don’t even know….  Logan, I need help.”  Suddenly everything came out in a rush.  “I’m on the run and the last time I was on the run was eighteen years ago… of course  that’s not counting that thing with Zemo when we had Clint and Nat and my sister keeping us alive, and frankly don’t even know how I survived that time!”  Remembering Steve’s instructions about Catie, he voice rose in distress.  “And as kids I had Catie making all the hard calls… and I can’t even _call_ her with this.”

“First of all, why’re you on the run?  Rogers never struck me as the type to do somethin’ that’d send his wife runnin’ from him.”

 “You need the boys and me to do some talking to this man o’ yours, Honey?” Rhapsody asked.

“That’s sweet of you, but no, I’m not on the run _from_ him.  I’m on the run _for_ him.”

“Ah.  Well in that case, you’re in good hands and I have a bar to run.  You two holler if you need something.” 

Karen was about to thank her, but Rhapsody and Angel were already halfway across the bar.  So instead she turned back to Logan and proceeded to fill him in on what she did know.  “Steve called me earlier today and said he needed me to get out of town.  When finally I got him to tell me why…well it’s a _good_ reason.  S.H.I.E.L.D.’s been compromised and Director Fury is dead.”

“Fuck…Nick’s dead?  And S.H.I.E.L.D.’s rotten?”  Logan placed a hand on her shoulder.  “Fuck, Karen, this is bad for you every way you look at it.  My sympathies, kid.  What’s the plan and how can I help?”

“I got no clue, Logan.  There were these three guys on the subway that work for S.H.I.E.L.D. and then later two of them were in here…. I need a place to go to ground, but I can’t go anyplace they’ll be looking for me and I’m out of ideas.

“I gotta place for you kid.  Even give you a ride there myself.  It’s a bit of a drive, but I think you’ll like it.”

“Where? It can’t be to family or to the Avengers.  Nowhere that has my friends or family, essentially.  They’d look there.”

“I don’t think they’re gonna look at the Westchester chapter of the Jehovah’s Witness.”

“No.  No way.  I draw the line there, Logan.  No evangelical anybody.  Besides, don’t most conservative religious groups have a thing about mutants?”  He chuckled lightly.

“Yes, they do…which is a part of why Chuck made the sign look like that.  It’s the cover for my friend’s school for mutant kids.  I even teach there sometimes.  You’ll be safe there from anything short of the apocalypse.”

“Thanks Logan.  I appreciate this.”

“Not a problem, kid, just, when they ask how we met…leave out that I was naked?”

“Deal!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
>  
> 
> I'm picking up the habit of teasing the next chapter, so here's a snippet of what's to come:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “You know, I don’t get the fuss and bother over mutants, they have a tendency to save our lives.”


	2. Laying Low

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen settles in at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, and finds out a little more about what's going on with SHIELD.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally, updates will not happen this fast, but I had a bad day and posting makes me feel better.
> 
> Much thanks to GalahadsGurl and quadrad, who have been beta-ing for me.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to naruturd for kudos and comments, and to quadrad for commenting.
> 
>  
> 
> (If you read Makes You Beautiful, there's a tiny cross-over element in this. Extra points if you can spot it!)

The ride to Westchester was pleasant.  Enough so that Karen had actually been able to calm down and enjoy the Connecticut scenery.  She had been leery of the giant motorcycle that Logan rode, so much larger and louder than Steve’s, but by the time they pulled up a short drive to a metal gate, the rumbling bass roar of the engine was soothing.  It amused her to note that the sign by the gate did indeed claim that this was the Westchester chapter of the Jehovah’s Witness.  A box on the side of the gatepost buzzed to life.

“Logan, we weren’t expecting you back so soon.  And you have a guest…”

“Kid needed a place to lie low for a while.  I owe ‘er, Scott.  Now pop the lock on the damn gate so I can come in.”

“I expect explanations when you get up to the mansion, Logan.”  The gate buzzed and swung open, letting the motorcycle drive up the longer drive to the school.  Logan parked the bike by the front door and Karen got off.  They were greeted by a striking woman with cocoa skin and silver hair and a man wearing dark red sunglasses.

“Logan, care to introduce your friend?”

“ _Our_ friend, Scott.  I went to her wedding with Logan as his plus one.”

“Scott, this is Karen Rogers.  The one who saved my life when I was captured a couple years back, remember?”

“It’s not like you didn’t turn right back around and save me.  I had been going the wrong way and your tracking ability got us righted.  Without you I would have been stuck in German Science Villain Cliché headquarters.”

“I see.  I’ve heard Logan talk about you, but I never thought I’d meet you.  What brings you to Xavier’s?”

“My husband Steve, he…. Can we maybe do this inside?  The whole situation has me freaked out.”

“Of course . . . please, after you.”

Inside the school was beautifully luxurious.  And massive; she kept getting turned about as she tried to keep track of where they were in the building.  Before long, she was ushered into a study, where a bald man in a wheelchair greeted her with a warm, genuine smile.

Logan stepped forward to make introductions.  “Kid, I’d like you ta meet Professor Charles Xavier.  Chuck here has helped me out of plenty of jams, and I’m sure once you tell him what you told me, he’ll help you too.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you at last, Mrs. Rogers.”

“Please, I prefer Karen.”  She spotted an armchair near the Professor’s wheelchair and motioned to it.  Receiving a nod and an understanding smile, she sat down and took a deep breath.  “Firstly, what do you know of an agency called S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“A fair amount, actually.  .  It is to the benefit of this school and to mutants in general, to track the current governmental powers to see if any might be a threat to the school or to mutants in general.  S.H.I.E.L.D. has come up in several of my scans.  However, they are considered to be of little threat, as they are much more interested in containing or recruiting the more unstable mutations out there.  A mutant by the name of Chan Ho Yin reportedly became unstable and died as a result of his mutation growing beyond his control.  From what I was able to gather, S.H.I.E.L.D. was there with him in the end, doing what they could to help him.  S.H.I.E.L.D. was there, trying to help him, according to what I can find.  So, yes, I know of S.H.I.E.L.D., Mrs. Rogers, sorry, Karen.”

“Do you know of its Director, Nick Fury?”

“Yes, why?”

“He’s dead.  I presume murdered from the context of the conversation that Steve and I had that precipitated me going on the run.  He also said that S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised.  I don’t know how or what or really anything at all.  I only know that when my husband tells me that a good friend is dead and the agency he works for is corrupt, before ordering me to get out of town, something is wrong. And then getting cornered at a bar in Brooklyn by a couple goons with orders to ‘take me in for questioning’ . . . well, something’s rotten and it ain’t Denmark.”

“This is troubling news.  I think perhaps you had best stay with us for the time being.  We’ll get you a room.  Storm, would you mind….”

“Of course not Professor.  I think we’ll put you near the faculty rooms.  Logan, would you give Karen a tour while I get her room ready?”

It was a relief to learn that Logan’s tour helped her get her bearings.  It helped that there were whole hallways that were just classrooms or bedrooms that she would never need to find again.  The only things she really needed to know where to find were the kitchen, dining room and the rec room.  She met a number of the students as Logan showed her around, each of them polite if not outright friendly.   It was a marked difference from her memories of Haven that almost all these students looked normal.  Haven’s mutants had borne visible proof of their mutations- fur, scales, feathers, or glaringly unusual skin tones, to name a few.  But she saw none of those things here.  It was a little disturbing to realize that society had such a deep fear of mutants only the ones that could pass for baseline lived on the surface, and the ones visibly mutated were forced underground.

When the tour was over, Logan led her to the room she’d be staying in.  It wasn’t far from the kitchen, but the door was identical to the one next to it.  She was worrying that she’d never be able to remember which was hers when Storm hung a whiteboard on it and handed her a packet of dry-erase markers.  “These are so you can personalize it.  All the students do it, and even some of the faculty.  Also, the board is magnetic, so just let me know if you want any magnets.  Dinner is in an hour.”

“Thank you.  I know this isn’t the ideal situation for any of us, but I’m grateful to you for taking me in like this.”

“It’s not a big deal, really.  Charles’s goal of peace has always been for everyone, human and mutant alike.  And you’ve proven that in you at least, that peace is possible.  You’re welcome here.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Dinner was about as normal as it can be when dishes are passed with telekinesis and the guy sitting next to you is blue, has a tail and talks with a German accent… a surprisingly pleasant German accent.  Karen was surprised, she had anticipated that the next time she heard German it would give her flashbacks to Latveria.  But Kurt was a sweetheart.

“Frau Rogers, vould hyu like some more mashed potatoes?”

“No, thank you though, Kurt.  I’m stuffed.”

“But ve haven’t even had desert yet!  Hyu’re not sick, are hyu?”

Karen laughed.  She had discovered Kurt was a feeder in that he delighted in feeding people.  He’d already put extra helpings of everything on the plate of the pretty Brazilian girl on his other side.  “Kurt, I’m fine, honest.”

“Give her a break, Kurt, she doesn’t have my fiery metabolism.  It’s OK when you carb-load me, but to other people it’s just annoying.”  Karen could tell everyone at the table agreed, except maybe a girl with auburn hair that was glaring daggers at both Karen and Kurt.  A green-skinned boy beside her had a hand on her shoulder, and Karen was really wondering what the deal was when Kurt spoke again.

“But, Amara…”  Kurt protested with genuine horror.

“No buts Kurt.  I know you’re just being German, but leave her alone after she says she’s full.”  To Karen, Amara shot a grin as she explained.  “It means he likes you.  But I get that it can be hard to keep up with his food pusher ways.”

“I understand the sentiment, and I’m not upset, just very full.  And tired.  I’ve had a bit of a rough day.  I think I’m going to call it a night.”

“Alright.  Sleep well.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In her room, Karen pulled the clunky phone from her back pocket where she had wedged it.  The awkwardness of the arrangement was worth not missing Steve’s call.  She sat on the bed and held it in her hands, looking at it, wishing it would ring.  There was nothing she wanted more than to hear her husband’s voice.  It felt like it had been a week since his call that morning, even though it hadn’t even been a full 12 hours yet.  She sighed and placed the phone on the bedside table.  Forcing herself into her usual routine, she changed into her pajamas, took her medicine and curled up in bed, before double checking the volume on the phone, making sure it would be loud enough to wake her.

Karen was finally drifting off to sleep as the phone rang.  She was fully awake in an instant and grabbing the phone even before that.  She fumbled with it, her hands not waking as quickly as the rest of her.  But it only took seconds to get the call answered.  “Steve!  Please God, tell me you’re alright.  I’ve been worried sick.”

“Karen, sweetie, I’m fine… really… just scratches.  Nat’s lost some blood but there’s nothing to worry about.  We’re going to keep moving tonight and tomorrow we’re going to go to see a guy I know.  I don’t want to give you specifics with this phone.  Yours is encrypted, mine’s not.”

“What do you mean Nat lost some blood?” At the knowledge that her friend was considered more trustworthy than her sister, Karen could feel her temper starting to rise as she snapped, “What was Nat doing with you?  If I can’t call Catie, why’d you trust Nat?  Is Nat more dependable than my sister?”  Karen was getting riled over his double standard when Steve interrupted.

“I told you not to call Cate for _her_ safety.  At the time, I had no clue what I was dealing with, but I thought she’d be safer in the dark.  But when I got to the hospital, Nat had already gotten the drive.  She also told me she’d already faced the guy who killed Fury.  We tried to decode it, but all we got was the location it came from.  It led us to the place I was trained, back in 43’.  Oh, dear Lord, what we found… Zola had worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. back when it was first started.  He built a giant computer and copied his mind onto it before faking his death.  All along, Hydra’s been inside S.H.I.E.L.D., I’m sure the STRIKE teams and the Insight project are Hydra, but…”

“Steve?  Baby, I need you to calm down.  We’ve faced Hydra before and lived.  Now tell me how Nat lost blood and you got something you’re calling ‘scratches’.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. launched a missile at the bunker we were in.  It collapsed.” Karen sighed at the matter of fact way he said that.  “We’re alright….  We’re headed back to D.C. to get some help from someone I know.”

“Can you trust him?”

“I think so.  He’s not S.H.I.E.L.D. so he’s not likely Hydra.  He was a pilot, but he’s out now.”

Karen bit down on her lower lip at the information, consumed by the knowledge that this information didn’t seem like enough to base her husband’s life on. “Steve, be careful.”

 “I will.” There was the sound of Steve taking a deep breath on the other end of the phone, before he changed the subject, “How are you?  Are you somewhere safe?  Don’t tell me where precisely, just tell me you’re safe.”

“Yes, I am.  I ran into Logan and he got me to that school he mentioned.”  Huffing, she protested lightly, “You know, I don’t get the fuss and bother over mutants, they have a tendency to save our lives.” Forcing the thought away that they had **needed** saving more times than was comfortable, she continued,  “Don’t worry about me; I’m surrounded by very nice people who can protect me from just about anything.  Stay safe and call me when you can.  I love you.”

“I love you too.  You’re my best gal, Karen… my world.  Keep yourself out of harm's way,  please.  I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I’m not going to go anywhere, Steve.  I know my limits.  And you will never have to find out what you’d do without me, promise. If you can, call me tomorrow around this time.  Night, honey.”

There was a small smile in her husband’s voice as he replied warmly, “Good night, my love.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
>  
> 
> WARNING, TEASER IMMINENT  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “What part of they broke my husband - the man I love more than life itself - and took him away in an anonymous black murder-van to places unknown was unclear to you, Professor?"


	3. Rude Shocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen is watching news coverage of the fight on the bridge. She does not react well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kinda has a little violence, and near the end someone does something that is sort of unethical, but I don't have a word for it. I'll try to warn as stuff comes up, but I don't necessarily know what will trigger readers. If you need warnings, tell me and I'll add it to my list.
> 
> Much thanks to my betas, GalahadsGurl and quadrad  
> Dedicated to naruturd for commenting.

Karen knew that her husband wouldn’t waste any time going at Hydra.  She also knew his eventual smack-down was bound to make the news, so she spent the next day perched on the couch in the rec room, glued to the television as she flipped intermittently between the major news channels.  It seemed like forever, before finally she caught a glimpse of Steve when the station’s regular programming was interrupted by footage of a massive gunfight on the streets of Washington D.C. 

The shaky movement of the news helicopter prevented the footage from being very clear, and without his trademark stars and stripes not many people would have recognized Captain America in the video.  But Karen knew the way her husband moved, the way Steve fought.  Seeing him vastly outnumbered and outgunned was physically painful to watch.  Knowing the man she loved was being pushed to the breaking point.  Despite her earlier anger, she was glad he had Natasha with him…as well as the man they had been going to see the night before.

Karen was on the edge of the sofa, leaning towards the television, when a shifting of the cushions signaled the arrival of another person.  She glanced at the person sitting beside her and attempted to come up with the girl’s name.  Continuing to draw a blank, Karen was about to ask the girl her name when the younger woman spoke first.  “So, major fight, huh?  They say who it is yet?”

“No, but I know who it is.  See the guy in the navy jacket?  That’s my husband Steve.  And the redhead is one of my best friends.  I’ve never met the guy with the wings, but I know he’s a friend of Steve’s.”

“Shit.  They are totally outnumbered.  Who are they fighting anyhow?”

It was about then that Professor Xavier moved into the room, asking patiently, “That is a very good question. Have you received any word from your husband about who has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.? I should like to be prepared, in the event this goes badly for us.”

“It’s bad for _all_ of us if the fight goes poorly, Professor.  He said it was Hydra.”

The girl’s face twisted as she blurted, “Wait . . . a mythical many-headed snake-thing has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.?  Dude, that’s fucked up.”

“I believe she was referring to the Nazi deep science program, Jubilee.  But I was under the impression that they were destroyed before the end of WWII.”

“They’re not dead by any means.  They may be buried deep, but they’re very much around.  I met Steve while he was hiding from them.  It’s a long story that ends with us in a Latverian dungeon, being held captive by the head of Hydra.  And apparently, what Steve found points to them having been in S.H.I.E.L.D. since the very beginning.” She turned back to the television as a long haired man with a metal arm engaged Steve.  The two men seemed pretty evenly matched, in terms of raw skill, but the man with the metal arm had all kinds of weapons, and the arm itself seemed like it was stronger than a normal arm.

The fight continued, leaving Karen on the edge of her seat, her whole body leaning towards the screen. Even knowing it was ridiculous, some part of her felt that if she could just get close enough to the television, that Steve would have a better chance against his opponent.   The view switched suddenly from the helicopter to a camera on the ground.  The new angle allowed for a better look at the combatants, and before long, a banner at the bottom of the screen read **Captain America engages masked opponent**.

Karen ignored it, desperately wishing for Steve to be ok as the man with the metal arm threw her husband about like he weighed nothing.  For a brief moment Steve seemed to gain the upper hand by wedging his shield into the joints of the metal arm.  Several lightning-fast moves later, Karen cheered as her husband tossed the man, sending him tumbling.  Then the whole fight went horribly wrong.  Rather than press his advantage, Steve stopped, and the look of pain on his face made Karen’s heart crack just a little.  He said something and received a reply in return, but Karen wasn’t a lip-reader.  She _was_ however a Steve-reader, and the completely lost look that descended like heavy rain across her beloved’s face finished the crack in her heart, shattering it utterly.  She might have lost her husband right then and there, but the man with the wings and Natasha protected him. 

Staring at the weapon her friend was holding, Karen could barely believe what she was seeing, *Where did Nat find a grenade launcher?  I love that woman like my sister, but Holy mother of God and all her wacky nephews!*

Unfortunately, the reprieve was short lived.  STRIKE team members fell upon the three heroes from every direction, materializing out of nowhere.    They advanced on Steve like a well-oiled machine, guns raised and postures clearly aggressive.  It didn’t take a genius to know they were ordering Steve to surrender.  Over the news mikes she could hear them ordering him to put down his shield. 

To her horror and despair, Steve did.

“WHAT?! No!  No.  Steve don’t do this to me baby.  You never give up.  You’ve never in your whole, stubborn, Irish life given in, and you are not starting now!  You hear me Steve!  Pick the shield back up, baby… please?”

In the back of Jubilee’s head, she could hear a voice, but she knew the voice was not speaking aloud. **Jubilee, would you please get us some hot tea?**

Professor Xavier entreated the distressed woman yelling broken pleas at the screen, “Karen, I understand your distress.  However, Steve cannot hear you, and you are getting to be rather deafening.  Perhaps you could lower your voice while in the Mansion?”

“He can’t do this to me.  Look, they’re putting him and Nat and the guy with the wings in that van and he’s not even _trying_ to resist.  Who is that and what the fuck did they do with my husband?”

“I would guess it had something to do with the man on the highway.  Was he familiar to you at all?”

“No.  And he’s rather recognizable.  Is there any way you could tell me if he’s got superpowers?  Maybe he whammied Steve.”

“Not from this range.  If I had been connected to Cerebro at the time, I could perhaps tell if he was a mutant, but I was not.”  There was a pause as the girl reappeared with the tea, earning a fond smile and a mental, **Thank you, Jubilee,** from the professor.

“No problem Prof.  Yours is caffeine free, Karen.  It said it was supposed to be ‘soothing’ on the box. .” Handing the older woman her cup, she wrapped her arm around her shoulder and promised, “We’ll figure something out, the Prof always does.”

The professor gave both women a small, warm smile as he replied, “I have always believed that with the proper application of tea and ingenuity we can solve most any problem.”

“And if tea and ingenuity don’t cut it, I’m calling Eric and asking him to help me burn Hydra to the godforsaken ground on which it stands.  I don’t think he’d mind, after the state they found Callisto in.”

“You…are friends… with Magneto?  The fuck?”

“Jubilee, language.  Although I will admit I did not think you would still be in contact with him after all this time.  His…vision…doesn’t bother you?”

“The first time we met I told him I was baseline, not blind, and if he would kindly not treat me like an idiot incapable of seeing the wonder of his home I would appreciate it.  He never questioned my motives again, and as long as he deals squarely with me, I return the favor.  He likes Steve, and he knows Steve and I love each other.  We invited him to our wedding, but I don’t think he came.  If I tell him Steve’s been taken, he’s gonna flip his shit.  Either I’ll get my husband back or Hydra will be ashes, or quite likely, both.”

“By what you’ve told me, Hydra is _within_ S.H.I.E.L.D. at present.  A great many innocent people might die in that assault; with no guarantee of Captain Rogers’ safe return.  Have you considered that fact?”

“What part of they broke my husband - the man I love more than life itself - and took him away in an anonymous black murder-van to places unknown was unclear to you, Professor?  I won’t stop trying to get him back until all of Hydra is dead, or I am.  I want the metal-armed bastard to pay for whatever he did to break Steve… I want STRIKE in **chains** , I want…” 

Suddenly, she collapsed forward and Jubilee lunged to intercept her unconscious form before it could hit the ground.  Tucking Karen onto her side on the sofa, Jubilee looked up at her mentor.  The Professor said nothing, only smoothed a tender hand over the older woman’s forehead. “Sleep, Karen.  Your mind is full of pain right now, but I know you do not truly wish to destroy the lives as you are threatening.  I am certain you will be more level-headed following a rest and some healing.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, that happened. From Professor X's viewpoint what he did was the right thing to do, and saved her from pain and prevented a known terrorist from razing a government agency. But he still used his mental powers on her without her permission, and I think that would feel very violating, so it's a no-go in most cases apart from battles and shit where the other person is actively trying to kill you. Later there will be some internal wrestling with this going on in Karen's head, and she has not been trained to think quietly, so it's a good bet the Prof "overhears" it. Here's hoping he learns from it.
> 
> Teaser Warning:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “Stay safe and burn Hydra to the ground, alright, sweetie?”  
> “Those seem like mutually exclusive things, Karen.”


	4. Red Sky at Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen finds out that some people don't stay dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to naruturd for commenting. 
> 
> Remember folks, comments are Muse Chow and a well fed Muse types faster

Karen woke to a gritty mouth and confusion.  At some point someone had moved her from her spot on the sofa, and she lay, still dressed, on top of her covers.  Outside her window the setting sun burned red.  Her last memory was fury and hate, not feelings she normally had.  As she swung her feet off the bed to sit up, the phone that sat on her bedside table began to ring.

“Steve?” she answered.  “The ever-loving fuck, Steve?”

“Karen?  What’s wrong?”

“You were on the television.  I saw you surrender to a Strike team.  Need I remind you our one thing we never do?”

“We never give up.  I remember.  But there was no way I was going to make it out of there alive, not with my reaction time shot the way it was.  I was drowning, Karen.  I never thought I’d ever…and then he was…I was overwhelmed.”

“Mind repeating that without the verbal redactions?”

“The man on the highway, he was my best friend in the whole world, before the war.  He was my second in command during the war.  That was Bucky.”

“Shit.  I’m sorry for going off on you Steve; I should have known there was a good reason for what you did.”

“The worst part was he didn’t even know his own name.  I called to him and he just said ‘Who the hell is Bucky?’  It’s like he’s forgotten everything.  What could do that to a person?”

“Amnesia?  You did tell me he fell off a train.  He could have gotten some severe head trauma.  And then there’s whatever Hydra’s done to him to get him to attack people for them.  He’s obviously not in control here.”

“No, he’s not, and he would hate that more than anything.”  His voice cracked a bit as he said it.  There was a moment of silence then, deep, measured breaths the only sound coming through the phone.  Karen waited, wanting to give Steve enough time to get back under control.  When the forcefully even breathing changed to a more natural rhythm, Karen broke the quiet.

“So how’d you break free?”

“Maria Hill saved us.  And good news, but don’t tell anyone, I don’t think he’d like it.  Nick’s still alive.  He faked his death.”

“He put you through all that shit and he isn’t even dead?!  The fucking hell he puts you through all that shit and gets away with it.  That one-eyed cretin is gonna answer for that, to me if no-one else.”

“Karen, it’s not a big deal.  Besides, I plan on taking S.H.I.E.L.D. apart from the ground up, so the guy is losing his life’s work, and if all goes well with Nat’s part of the plan, all his secrets too.  He’s going to pay plenty.  Letting you at him on top of that would just be cruel.”

“Ok, he lives.  But I’m not making him brownies for a _year_.”

“Fair enough.”  Karen sighed.  “Now, be honest, the plan you have, what’s the threat level like?”

“Well, we need to get into the com tower and reach out to all the loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and support staff to get some of them to fight on our side, then we need to get to the Insight helicarriers to switch out their targeting blades with dummies.  I don’t know how many Hydra double agents we’ll have to face or how much backup we can get from those on our side.  And then there’s Bucky…”  Steve trailed off, obviously in pain from having his oldest friend on the opposite side from him.

“Steve,” Karen began gently, “how do you plan on handling him?”

“I’ll try to talk to him if he gives me the choice.  I’ve got to believe he’s still in there, and maybe I can get him to fight what’s been done.  But if he won’t listen or just isn’t…if I can’t get through to him….  I can’t kill him, Karen.”

“I know.  You have a hard time killing anyone, its part of why I love you, but this is different.  This is Bucky.  You can’t do that and I get it.  If someone took Catie or Pepper and turned them into a weapon, I know I couldn’t take that step to stop them.  You just do what you can in the moment to stay alive.  Come home to me, OK Steve?  You don’t have to stop him; you just have to come home alive.”

“Thanks, Karen.  I needed to hear that.  Folks around here have been saying that he’s not the kind of man you save, that he’s the kind you stop, but I can’t see him that way.  Bucky’s not a villain.”

“Well of course he’s not a villain.  He’s a hero.  Pick up any book on the Second World War and it’ll tell you, James Buchanan Barnes was a war hero, a Howling Commando, and the best friend of Captain America.  Bucky was a good guy when he was in control of his actions, and nothing he does when he’s not behind the wheel counts against him.”

“I know that, I’m just a little worried that he’s going to be somewhere during the fight facing someone who doesn’t know that.  If he faces Sam, I’m fairly sure Sam’s going to try to kill him.”

“Sam is…?”

“The guy we went to that first night.  He had mechanical wings on during the bridge fight.”

“Ah.  He looked competent and all during the fight, but Bucky was beyond competent.  And he’s had something on the order of seventy years to hone his skills, and there’s the arm…I think Bucky will be OK if he winds up fighting Sam.”  As much as Karen wanted to spend the rest of the night talking to Steve, if he was going into battle tomorrow he would need his rest.  “Stay safe and burn Hydra to the ground, alright, sweetie?”

“Those seem like mutually exclusive things, Karen.”

“Well, stay as safe as you can and do as much damage as you can without dying.  No dying, that’s the rule.  I’ll be watching the news tomorrow, but call me when you’re done making grown men cry.  Once it’s safe to leave here I expect a date night.”

“As you wish.  A night on the town with my best girl sounds lovely right now.  I’ll talk to you tomorrow.  Night, Karen.”

“Night, Steve.”

Karen wasn’t at all tired, even though the sun was setting, but she was a little hungry, so she decided to go raid the kitchen.  There were specific rules about what was fair game that had been explained on her first day, and a laminated copy of the rules was stuck to the fridge with magnets, so she knew that the pizza box on the bottom shelf was up for grabs.  Upon further inspection the contents were two slices of peperoni and one of mushroom.  Karen grabbed a plate from the cupboard and heated up the two peperoni slices.  While she waited for the microwave to finish, she checked the freezer and found the tail end of a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.  Laden with her finds, she went to the rec room and curled up on the sofa.  She was finishing off the ice cream when Logan wandered in.

“Hey, kid.  You back to yourself yet?  I heard you were preaching fire and brimstone earlier.”

“I thought I’d lost my husband to Hydra forever, Logan.  Love can make you do really crazy things.  Steve’s my lodestone, and without him I lose my way a bit.  You can understand that, right?”

“Yeah, I get it.  But you’re not on the warpath now, what’s different?”

“Steve called me.  Maria broke him out of Hydra custody and took him to some secret base or something.  He’s as safe as he can be right now.  And tomorrow, he’s going to take S.H.I.E.L.D. down hard and fast, burn out the infection.  He’s in a better place to enact a great and terrible vengeance than I am.  And when he comes home all will be well again.”

“That’s good, then kid.  You mind if I turn on the TV?  I can’t sleep.”

“That’s fine, Logan.  I’m just about done here anyway.  I should at least try to get some rest before tomorrow.  Good night.”

“Night, kid.  See you tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> WARNING; TEASER IMMINENT  
> *
> 
> *
> 
> *
> 
> Karen wondered what it said about her that she liked the Master of Magnetism better than she did the supposedly benevolent Professor X.


	5. This is getting to be a habit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the final battle against Hydra goes down, Karen is stuck watching on the sidelines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason this chapter took for freaking ever to get right. But here it is. A tad short, but longer than it could have been.
> 
> We're nearing the end of movie canon and into the realm of pure invention. Yea or Nay to including the graveyard scene from Karen's POV?
> 
> Much love to my betas, without whom, this chapter would be much shorter and not as good.  
> Dedicated to tamarama for kudos and comments, and to naruturd for comments

Karen woke somewhat later than she had intended the next morning.  Still, she was motivated to get out of bed the moment she did wake up.  Steve was going into battle today and there was no way that she was going to miss whatever of the fight made it onto the news.  Most of the fight would be in the Triskelion, a building even more secure than the Pentagon, so she wasn’t sure how news crews would even know it was going on.  She worried about not being able to track the fate of her husband as she brushed her teeth, she agonized about her sister, uninformed and possibly surrounded by enemies as she took her morning meds, she fretted about Natasha and the new guy getting hurt as she pulled on her faded tee, and she stewed about Bucky as she pulled her hair into a ponytail.

As she settled herself on the sofa, Professor Xavier rolled into the rec room.  She wasn’t sure how she should feel about him right now.  From what she could figure out, he must have mind-whammied her yesterday when she was ranting.  Sure, that probably saved lives, but he’d knocked her out without warning her that he might do it.  That kind of thing felt pretty violating when she thought about it.  He was an educator for God’s sake, he taught an ethics class, he should know how badly that sort of thing could affect someone.  But there was very little she could do about it at the moment, so instead she plastered a smile on her face and said hello.

“Hello to you as well, Karen.  I hope you’re feeling better today.  Logan tells me that everything worked out with your husband, that his capture was only temporary and that now he’s with allies.  I was glad to hear it.”

“Yes, Steve got rescued from Hydra.”  Karen’s tone was curt.  She wasn’t going to forgive him that easily, as if the fact that her husband wasn’t dead was an excuse for knocking her unconscious.  “But he’s going back into battle today.  He means to dismantle S.H.I.E.L.D. and take Hydra apart.”  Like Karen had intended to do; she doubted that Charles would get upset by it if Steve did it.  “Hence me, sitting glued to the TV in hopes they show some of it.”

“Ah.  Well, I’ll leave you to it, if you promise not to go into a rage if you see something unpleasant.”

“If they show anything _at all_ of the fighting it’ll be unpleasant.  There’s only a handful people going in against God knows how many Hydra agents, and I’m emotionally invested in at least three of them.  But it’s unlikely that Steve’s going to have another shutdown moment and get carted off in an anonymous black murder-van, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“Ah.  I see.”  Charles sounded rather unsure, leaving some doubt in her mind that he _did_ see, but he left the room, so she took it as a win.  Karen wondered what it said about her that she liked the Master of Magnetism better than she did the supposedly benevolent Professor X.  But Eric had always been straight with her, despite her baseline status, and according to Cate he had been devastated by the actions of Viper and Reaper.  Charles by comparison confused and worried her, especially after he knocked her unconscious.

There wasn’t any news on the main stations until noon.  Logan and Storm had made her grilled cheese and a mug of soup, because she didn’t want to leave and miss it, and when the editorial show that was on was interrupted for breaking news, they were sitting on the sofa with her.

“What in th’ hell?”  Logan squinted at the screen, where large hangar doors were sliding open, exposing the docking bay of the Triskelion.  A shadowy shape lifted from the cavernous space and into the D.C. air.  “What’s that risin’ outa the Potomac?”

“Insight Helicarrier, I think.  Steve and his team are going to need to get to them and do…something to them.”  Karen tried to recall the conversation last night.  “It was something about targeting.  At any rate he needs to disable them before bad things happen and tons of people die.  Hey, look, that’s Sam, with the wings on that one there.  And that guy systematically destroying air support is…well, he’s not on our side right now, but let’s really, really hope he doesn’t die.”

“Why do we not want him to die, if he fights for Hydra?” Storm asked.

“He’s not right in his head at the moment.  Hydra did something to him, or he’d never be acting this way.  And if he dies, I get the joy of putting my husband back together like a bazillion piece puzzle.  He’s important to Steve.”

“I thought I knew all’a Cap’s friends, from the wedding at least.  I don’t recall a guy with a metal arm.  Do you ‘Ro?” Storm shook her head, so Logan turned to Karen.  “What’s his name?” Karen hesitated, chewing her lip.  Logan tilted his head at her.  “Come on, Kid, gimme a break.  We can’t keep calling him the man with the metal arm.  Just a name?”

“I do not see the harm in a name, Karen.”

“It depends on the name and who it belongs to,” groused Karen “but the name is James.  James Buchanan Barnes.”

Logan and Ororo stat perfectly still for a moment in shocked silence, and the burly Canadian put a hand over the slightly trembling arm of his...Karen wasn’t sure what they were to one another, but the move was gentle and comforting.  As she calmed down, slowly and with characteristic drollness, Ororo replied, “then we shall hope he survives and can be restored.”

The battles on the Helicarriers continued, smoke and fire and explosions obscuring the scene as they watched, eyes searching for any sign of Steve.  Once or twice they caught sight of his progress, but each time they lost track of him again.

Suddenly, the carriers opened fire…on each other.  One of them crashed directly into the Triskelion, crashing through the building in a way vaguely reminiscent of the two towers falling.  Karen’s heart grew tight in her chest.  Cate might be in that building.  Steve might be in the Helicarrier.  She had no clue where Natasha or Clint were.  It was entirely possible that her little family was about to lose close to half its members.  She felt like throwing up was a definite possibility.  She saw a helicopter do something that it really probably shouldn’t do, catching someone who leapt from the building.  A familiar red, white, and blue figure fell from one of the other two Helicarriers falling into the water below them as the Helicarrier itself descended more slowly.  Karen’s heart couldn’t take any more of this, so she closed her eyes and resorted to gallows humor.

“It’s getting to be a habit.”

“What?”

“Steve crashing aircrafts into water.  At least its summer in DC, so he can’t freeze.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
> WARNING; TEASER IMMINENT  
> *
> 
> *
> 
> *
> 
> “No. I had to watch my husband crash a Helicarrier on national live TV, so I’m not in the mood to deal with my sister dicking around with refusing medical care.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen reunites with her sister and her husband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to naruturd for commenting.

One nerve wracking hour after the final Helicarrier crashed into the water, Karen’s phone rang.  Or rather, began to ring.  The instant that it so much as beeped, Karen answered it.

“Steve?”

“Sorry, it’s Natasha.  Steve’s in the hospital, so is Cate, but she’s not as bad.  It’s Kings County, how soon can you get here?”

“I’ll need to get a ride from…” Logan just nodded at her.  “I’ll be on my way shortly.  How bad is it?”  As she talked, she ran to her room to grab the go-bag.

“Well, we found him on the side of the Potomac and he was pretty beat up, couple of bullet wounds, in addition to having water in his lungs.  He’s in surgery now. They say it’ll at least be five hours.”

“I’ll be there before he wakes up, then.  Is Cate…”

“She’s going to have an interesting scar, courtesy of some falling metal, and she’s refusing pain medicine.  But she’s also very proud of taking out a squad of Hydra agents by herself before the ceiling started to come down.”

“She would be.  When I get there, I’ll guilt her into taking her medicine.  I’m hanging up now, Logan’s got me on the back of his bike and I can’t keep talking.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

When they reached the hospital, her first goal was Cate.  Steve would still be in surgery.  She got the room number from the receptionist and went to the correct floor.  She found her sister easy enough by following the sounds of cussing.

“I do not want any drugs, dammit!”  Cate yelled and shoved a doctor’s hand away.  “Get that shit away from me!”

“Really, Catie, you’re going to do this?”  At the sound of Karen’s voice, Cate whipped he head up, revealing two jagged cuts running down her face from her left eye to her chin.  Sutures held the edges together across her cheek.  She had two black eyes and patch of her hair on her right temple was gone.

“Karen!  Thank god you’re alright.  I swear I had no idea they sent a team to find you until Carpowski showed up at my desk.  He’s a good guy, really, not Hydra.”

“I’m fine, Cate, but you’ve got stitches in your face and you’re refusing meds.”  Cate almost always refused meds, she didn’t even take Tylenol.  “I know you’re worried about ending up like Mom, but a few painkillers for facial lacerations do not a junkie make.”

“Karen…”

“No.  I had to watch my husband crash a Helicarrier on national live TV, so I’m not in the mood to deal with my sister dicking around with refusing medical care.”  Karen’s face was hard as she stared down her older sister.  “You are taking whatever they give you, you are not going to complain about it, and we’re not leaving until you and Steve are cleared by the doctors.”

“Ok, Karen.  I’ll take the damn drugs.” Cate paused, her face a mess of conflicting emotions as a doctor handed her some pills she swallowed.  “Did you know?  About Hydra, did Steve tell you?”

“Yes.  He called me shortly before the goon squad found me.  He didn’t know who had gotten inside S.H.I.E.L.D., only that it was compromised. Later he called after S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to blow him up when he discovered Hydra was the culprit.”

“And you didn’t tell me?  Karen, I worked for those people, I took orders from those people.  I did things with only the word of my superiors that they were good things to do!  How do I know that I don’t have innocent blood on my hands?  And you really thought that it was ok to keep that from me?”

“Call me selfish, but I would rather my sister be alive and coping with guilt, than dead and me wondering if I could have stopped it.  Think about what would have happened if you were told about Hydra.  You would have tried to bring S.H.I.E.L.D. down, just like Steve did, but how many agents could you have convinced with only your civilian sister’s word for it?  And then the real Hydra agents could take you out quietly, because they would know you knew.”

“So silence was a logical choice, but when did you start making logical choices?”

“Ha ha ha, Catie.  Just because I was hardly ever the one making tough calls as a kid, doesn’t mean I can’t act rationally.”  Karen sighed.  “So, I hear you took out an army of heavily armed and armored Hydra goons with only your sidearm and a gum wrapper.”

“It was seven men in Kevlar vests with shock sticks.  And I had a knife too.  Three of them were super easy, as they greeted the other four they did that stupid two fist salute and exposed that spot under the armpit that isn’t covered by the Kevlar.  The others…were bloody.  And I actually really liked Carl.…”  Cate began to cry silently, tears flooding her eyes.

“Oh, Catie….” Karen sat on the bed next to her sister and put an arm around her waist.  They cuddled for a little while, at least until Cate got herself back under control.  When Karen saw that her sister was feeling a little better, she moved back to the chair in the room.  If Karen had been the one upset, she would have preferred to keep cuddling, but Cate always preferred to gain some distance after crying.

The doctors told Cate she was free to go a little while later, so the sisters moved to the surgery waiting room.  The guy with the wings and Natasha were already there.  Cate sat silently next to the redheaded Avenger, while Karen plopped down beside Sam.  She analyzed him out of the corner of her eye before talking to him.  He had the remnants of a split lip and swelling on his face, but despite the damage he was handsome, cinnamon-brown skin with a neatly trimmed beard and from the looks of his cheeks his smile would likely light up a room like Steve’s did.  His eyes were red, like he’d been crying.

“Sam, right?”

“Yeah, how did you…?”

“I’m Karen.”  She stuck out her hand to shake his, quietly noting the abraded skin across his knuckles.  “Steve’s my husband.”

“He mentioned you.  Actually the first time I met him.  I was expecting him to be all about the good old days, but then he lists all the ways now is better than then, and one of the big ones was you.  Later he came to visit me at the VA hospital and he said the only thing that makes him happy was his wife.”

“I do my best, but I’m not sure he’ll ever be over some of the things he’s seen.  I wouldn’t be, if I had seen the shit that went down in World War Two.  It’s only been a few years for him, you know.  But I wish he could feel happiness not related to me.  That’s not entirely healthy, tying happiness to one person.”

“No, it isn’t.  But most people wouldn’t see it that way.”

“Most people don’t have chronic depression and PTSD.  I am well aware that it takes a network, not just one person.  Steve needs more than just me because I can’t be there all the time and apparently when I leave him alone for a few days he goes back to his habit of crashing aircraft into bodies of water.  He has some ‘splaining to do.”

Sam nodded and the two went back to companionable silence as they waited for a doctor to tell them Steve was out of surgery.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Steve was out of surgery and in a recovery room.  It had taken some bitching out of the nurse to let Sam stay in the room, but Karen wasn’t up to being alone at the moment and one of Cate’s stitches had popped when she scowled at Natasha after one too many Scarface jokes.  Since her sister was getting fixed up and Nat had decided discretion was the better part of valor and disappeared, Sam was the only one left to help her hold vigil.

At one point, a skinny young agent (or Karen supposed former agent, as the Agency he had worked for was a smoking crater both literally and figuratively) had come by with Steve’s shield.  They had put divers in the water to retrieve it.  Karen wasn’t sure if she was happy that Steve wouldn’t lose it, or pissed off at it.  It was irrational to get pissed at an inanimate object, but that round shield was a symbol of the duty and burden of Captain America, and she wished like hell that it was a burden that Steve didn’t have to carry.

Sam played some music for them, and Karen had to admit it helped keep her calm.  She let her mind float on the sound and found some measure of peace.  She was jolted out of it when Steve mumbled “on your left.”  Sam smiled a smile that was equal parts relief and ferocity.  There was obviously a story there, but Karen wasn’t interested in it at that moment.

“Steve, baby?”

“Yeah, doll?”

“You gotta stop crashing aircrafts into bodies of water.  It is not a healthy or acceptable hobby.”

“Sure thing, Karen.  This one hurt more than the last one.  Why do my lungs feel like they’re on fire?”

“You tried to breathe the Potomac.  Please note that was not a wise decision.  Neither was getting shot or pummeled, both of which you also did.”

“Yeah…Bucky…he….”

“I told you he might not be the kind you save, Steve,” interrupted Sam.

“No.  Bucky’s the one who got me to shore, I’m sure of it.  Why would he do that if he didn’t know me?  His mission was to kill me, but instead he saved me.  Bucky’s still in there.  Under whatever they did to his memories, the guy I knew from childhood on is still in there.”

“So we find him and go digging,” Karen said.  Sam cocked an eyebrow at her.  “What?  You didn’t honestly think I’m going to let Steve go chasing Bucky on his own?  Natasha can probably dig up the most leads.  Information is her specialty.  We get whatever intel we can, formulate a plan, and track him down.”  She shot another glance at Sam.  “You wanna come with?”

“Yeah.  I can come with.  But now that I know Steve’s not going to die, I think I’ll head back home for a shower and some shut-eye.  Later.”

With Sam gone, Karen and Steve were left alone.  They shared whispered reassurances and gentle touches, and when Karen began to fall asleep Steve shifted to make room in the hospital bed and she slept with her head on his shoulder and her arm around his waist.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> Warning, teaser imminent.  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “I liked him enough to mourn him. Until I found out that the guy I trusted to be better than me was just. Like. Me."


	7. Missions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Graveyard scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the movie's narrative as far as this story is concerned, and the only scene where I copied whole chunks of dialogue and blocking into the narrative, so I hope it worked. I also hope that I didn't shoehorn Karen in too much.
> 
> Much love to my betas and to my Muse (you know who you are) who kept me going.
> 
> Dedicated to Naruturd for commenting. Remember folks, feedback is the TNT with which I blow up the writers block.

It took a little over a week, but the doctors did release Steve, albeit grudgingly.  The main reason it took that long was that none of the doctors could believe that someone could recover that quickly from injuries that severe (not to mention surgery) in less than a week.  Really, by all rights he ought to still be in incredible pain, not refusing morphine on the grounds that he felt fine.  They said outright that if it weren’t for the persuasive arguments of several scary persons that Steve had rapid healing they wouldn’t have released him until two weeks.  Even with the release, they had Steve sign an extra waiver stating that any re-injury was not the fault of the hospital or the doctors.

As they were signing the last of the paperwork to get Steve sprung from King’s County, Natasha appeared in the doorway.

“Nick wants to say goodbye in person before he goes to ground.”

“Oh, reeeaally now?”  Karen’s voice was taut with anger and her face was filled with a smile that spoke of thoughts best left unknown and unspoken of.

“Honey, you promised that you’d let him live.”  Steve was alarmed by the sudden vulpine grin on the face of his wife.  To Nat he gave a look of reproach.  “Why would you bring that up?  You know how Karen feels about the guy right now.  I thought you liked Nick.”

“I liked him well enough when he was responsible for keeping my moral compass from pointing due south.” Nat gave an indifferent shrug, but her face hardened into a mask of utter stillness.  “I liked him enough to mourn him.  Until I found out that the guy I trusted to be better than me was just.  **Like.**   _Me._   Until I discovered the man I trusted with my soul didn’t trust me enough to save me from unneeded grief over a death that never happened.”  The scary cast to the spy’s face passed, like cloud cover blowing off to reveal blue skies.  “But he wants to say goodbye, and I think both Karen and I are mature enough not to skin him alive.”

“I already promised to limit my vengeance to the withholding of baked goods.”  The scary grin was still in place.  “I just want to express my…well wishes for the journey that will take him far, far from me, and let him know I hope he takes all the time he needs.  Far away and preferably somewhere without a phone.”

Steve hurriedly signed the last paper and handed the stack to the discharge nurse standing in the corner with a look of horror.  He offered an arm to Karen and tried to get them out of the hospital as fast as he could, before the nurse told everybody what a terrifying woman Captain America had married.  Not because he disliked Karen’s ruthless streak, to the contrary, he liked it a lot, but if somebody made a crack or made her feel uncomfortable he’d feel the need to deck them and he had doctors’ orders to take it easy.

Natasha had disappeared at some point, ghosting away without a word, as per her usual habit, but they were met in the lobby by Sam.  The three of them drove to a specific cemetery, one that held Nick Fury’s empty grave.  They stood by the marker in silence for a moment before Nick Fury came up to them.

“So, you’ve experienced this sort of thing before?” he asked Steve.

“You get used to it,” was Steve’s reply.  The tension was palpable as the four of them stood looking at the bouquet of white flowers and the headstone.

“We’ve been data mining Hydra’s files,” Nick said, breaking the tension.  “Looks like a lot of rats didn’t go down with the ship.  I’m headed to Europe tonight, wanted to ask if you’d come.”

“No.”  Karen’s voice was steel, hard and cutting.  “No way.”

“She’s right,” Steve looked Fury in the eyes, as best he could with Nick’s sunglasses. “There’s something I gotta do first.”

“How ‘bout you, Wilson?  Could use a man with your abilities.”

Sam looked at Steve and Karen.  He noted her gritted teeth and the way Steve hung on to her like he was drowning and she was a life vest.  This was the wages of a soldier trying to be a spy, and it wasn’t what he wanted, to be that out of his depth.  “I’m more of a soldier than a spy.”

“Alright then.” He shook Sam’s hand, then Steve’s.  He was about to reach toward Karen when she put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

“I wouldn’t suggest you contact us for a while.  As far as I’m concerned, you’re best off if I pretend you really did die.”

“Fair enough.  If anybody asks for me, tell them they can find me,” he inclined his head toward the grave “right here.”

“You should be honored,” came a voice from behind them “that’s about as close as he comes to saying thank you.”  Karen turned to smile at Nat.  It wasn’t lost on her that although the former Agent’s voice was level and she didn’t have the dangerous gleam in her eye that foretold violence, she had timed her entrance to coincide with Nick walking away.  No doubt if they had been together longer than that brief moment, blood would be spilled.

“Not going with him?”  Steve asked teasingly.

Karen snorted and rolled her eyes, and Natasha put a heavy emphasis on the word “no.”

“And you’re not staying here?”  The question was honest, unlike the previous rhetorical one.

“I blew all my covers, I gotta go figure out new ones.”

“Might take a while.”

“I’m counting on it.”  Nat’s smile was shy, more so than normal.  Karen thought maybe the loss of her covers made Nat feel naked or vulnerable in some way, but then the smile shifted back to Nat’s standard smirk.  “That thing you asked for…I called in a few favors from Kiev.”  She handed Steve a brown file with Cyrillic script on the front.  Knowing what that was, Karen shifted to lean on Steve a little, to let him know she was there.

Natasha gave them both little hugs and the cheek kisses she only bestowed on those she trusted.  She started to walk away and then stopped, hesitantly.  When she turned they could see tears at the corners of her eyes.

“Be careful, Steve.  You might not want to pull on that thread.”  She opened her mouth to say more, then pursed her lips and one tear fell as she turned and strode quickly away.

Steve opened the file and Karen leaned in to see.  The first thing she saw was a photo of a man in some sort of cryogenics tube with frost at the edges of the window and blue lighting highlighting exactly how shadowed his eyes were.  Below that was a small picture of James Buchanan Barnes in his military uniform.  He didn’t look anything like the frozen man, but the shape of the forehead, the curve of the lips….  Yes, he could have become the frozen man, given pain and malnutrition and sleep deprivation.

“You two are really going after him?”  Sam’s voice startled Karen out of her imagining what horrors had to have happened to turn Bucky Barnes into the Winter Soldier.

“You don’t have to come with us,” Karen offered.  She didn’t want him to think an agreement made on no sleep and relief at Steve’s recovery was binding if he really would rather go back to his old life.

“I know.”  Sam nodded at the file.  “When do we start?”

Together the super soldier and his wife said “we just did.”

The three of them smiled at one another and walked back to the car.  It was time to get to work

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: teaser imminent  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “Karen, fieldwork is dangerous!”  
> “Apparently so was an office job at the Triskelion."


	8. Recon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cap's crew does recon on the Winter Soldier and on Hydra. Elsewhere, someone is doing recon on himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, and thank you for all your kind wishes and words.

Over the time that she had been dating, engaged, and married to Steve Rogers, Karen had learned a few valuable lessons.  Always know if the guy you’re fighting has mind control; a weapon that doesn’t run out of ammo is your friend; surprisingly, a person with the super hero name “Squirrel Girl” may be the most powerful person on the planet; if it’s glowing and you can’t tell how or why, don’t touch it.  But most importantly, she had learned the value of recon.  Information was a tool, a guardian, a weapon.  Finding the information wasn’t the hard part.  She’d been a nerd in school and honestly, with the help of a suped-up computer from Stark, doing recon on the bad guys Steve fought wasn’t much harder than writing a research paper.  This might be harder, what with the timeline and the secretive nature of the organization that had held Bucky prisoner.

Once at home, she sniffed lightly.  Cleaning products.  Nat had mentioned their place had been tossed, but somehow that knowledge wasn’t as real as seeing things out of place and smelling the products Nat had used to fix the damage.  Karen plastered a vicious smile on her face and guided Sam into the dining room.  There, she nabbed the file from Steve.  He looked at her with one eyebrow cocked.

“You’re never going to know what it says if you hold it like it’s a newborn baby, Steve.  We’ll need to take it apart and analyze it.”

“I know, it’s just…”

“It’s the only connection to your best friend that you have and as such is precious beyond measure.  I get it, I do.  But Bucky is _family_ and this is just a clueto finding _him_.”

“Right.”  He blew out a hard breath and looked to her.  “What first?”

“Dude, what’re you asking her for?”  Sam blinked and turned to Karen.  “Sorry, that came out wrong.  But aren’t you a civilian?  And Steve’s supposed to be a genius tactician or something.”

“Didn’t you just jump out of a building because Steve didn’t plan for what would happen if the wings got trashed?  And then there’s the one where he said to fire on the helicarriers he was in at the time, remember that?  Steve’s smart and all, but he kinda needs people to help him plan or he wades in like he’s five foot four and a hundred pounds soaking wet and needs to get his licks in fast before he dies.”  She looked at her husband.  “You know it’s true.  You know _how_ to plan well, but you habitually do it very poorly.”

“She’s right.  I always leaned on Bucky and Gabe for planning.  Bucky had the experience leading and Gabe was a certified genius.  Karen’s a genius too, and she has experience in hiding from the world.  I trust her judgment.”

“Thank you, babe.”  Karen opened the file and lay out the sheets inside, teasing apart staples and making note of which pages had writing on them.  “We’ll need copies of all these.  Steve, you know where the three-in-one is, copy them, and scan any of the ones with Cyrillic writing.  If it’s not English, scan it.  Here, take the file folder too.”

What was left was a map, six pictures (one of the figure in the cryo-tube, one of Bucky as he was in WWII, two gruesome shots of his flayed arm, and the same two angles of the new joining of flesh and metal), and several piles of schematics for his arm.  She stacked the schematics to one side to have Tony look at, piled the photos with the less disturbing ones on top to the other side, and spread out the map.

“From the looks of things, that’s a topographical map of someplace mountainous.”  Karen squinted at the map.  This felt less like recon and more like a treasure hunt.

“And the place names are in Cyrillic writing, so maybe Russia?” Sam said.

“But the notes written on it are in German, best I can tell, directions to a specific spot somewhere in this region.”  She pointed to a peak, indicated by the concentric lines of the topographical map.

“We’ll need better translations.  Should I take this to Steve for scanning?”

“Yeah.  Down that hallway.  Bring back whatever he has copied.”

It took them the better part of the day to copy and scan the file, switching out whenever one person got tired.  Then they sent all the scanned pages with Russian writing to a translator Pepper had recommended.  They were just finishing up dinner when the laptop had pinged.  Karen downloaded the file of translations and set it to print.

It was nearly midnight when Sam became aware he was yawning.  Karen was still sorting pages as they printed out and Steve was leaning on the wall watching her.  It was clear she had a sort of mad genius with information, as she would occasionally stop sorting, and write an address down, in colored pen.  There was some form of color coding, and it seemed to also apply to the sticky notes she slapped on certain pieces of paper.  At any rate, it was pretty obvious she didn’t need them, so Sam made his excuses and went home.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Sometime later, Karen looked up from her notes to smile at Steve.  The sleepy look in her eye and the tiny half-grin were the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.  That said, she also looked incredibly vulnerable.

“Are you sure you want to…I mean, I’m really glad you want to help me find Bucky, I am, but I also don’t want you in danger, so if you want to stay here….”  Instantly her eyes flashed and her smile hardened.

“Yeeeeaaah.  Like that’s going to happen.”

“Karen, fieldwork is dangerous!”

“Apparently so was an office job at the Triskelion.  And I’m not planning on storming the beaches, Steve.  I’m your information wrangler.  You want to know what the color code stands for?  Red is a dangerous high reward target; green, safer high reward target; yellow, dangerous low reward target; blue, safe low reward target.  The “reward” would be more information.  Every base you go through, I want you to get me all the information you can get out before you blow it up.  Every one of the high reward targets should yield more targets.  Do you think that you and Sam in some flea-pit hotel in,” she glanced at the list, “Santorini, Greece, are going to get anywhere with the information you find?”

“No, but the places we’ll be going…”

“Our first kiss was on Latverian soil.  You want to re-think that, mister?”

“Half these countries are war-torn!  I’m not taking you to Egypt!”

“Don’t worry about Egypt, that’s a low value target.  And you can totally make it a day trip to Kazakhstan and the other Middle Eastern countries while I chill at a hotel in Greece.  Actually, I think Greece would make a nice home base for the Mediterranean targets too, and Moscow for the western Russian-slash-Ukrainian sites, although we’ll need to make a separate trip to the Kamchatka peninsula and another for Madripoor.  Honestly it’s the South American sites that worry me.  If we don’t plan out the trip itinerary just right we’ll end up on a DEA watch list.”

“I just don’t want to lose you.”  One raised eyebrow and a pointed look had him back-tracking.  “I’m used to thinking of you as a non-combatant, I suppose.”

“I AM a non-combatant.  I’m not asking you to hand me a gun and let me watch your back in a firefight.  I’m asking you to take me on a whirlwind, round-the-world second honeymoon where you occasionally go off with your former para-rescue buddy to infiltrate and destroy Hydra bases.  I’ll stick to hotels and beaches and cafés.”

Steve sighed.  There was no way he would win this one right now.  Instead of fighting more (and it would become a fight if he pushed right now, a nasty one) he wrapped her in his arms and pressed his face into her thick dark hair.  They could deal with this tomorrow.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Somewhere in Virginia, a cabin was broken into, and a dark figure read stolen books about WWII by the light of a flashlight.  He wasn’t sure if this man he saw in black and white photos was him.  The black and white seemed wrong, disjointed memories of brilliant red and searing blue fought in his mind with the ordered greyscale of the pictures.  It wasn’t right, but he had no way of knowing if the problem was the pictures or his own mind.  He fell asleep tracing the faces of people he almost knew with a metal finger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com


	9. Love and War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Karen spend some quality time together and the man formerly known as Bucky gets some things done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please Note: The first section happens almost immediately after the last chapter, but the second takes place over an extended time period. Basically I had two short chapters and used them to make one medium chapter.
> 
> Warnings for semi-smut and violence.

In spite of Karen’s teasing, Steve was, in fact, a tactical genius, seeing as strategy is what happens before a battle and tactics is what happens during when it’s all gone to hell in a handbag.  Engaged in a mission, he could see it through, no matter the obstacles.  So when his mission was to snap his strategist wife out of a self-destructive planning mode, he fought dirty.

He could tell she was still thinking about the mission.  She had the little forehead wrinkles that she never had when she was actually asleep.  So he wrapped his arms around her and whispered behind her ear.

“Now, how’s a fella supposed to sleep when his wife’s thinking of another man?”

“Thinking of how to find _your_ best friend, Steve.  Not how to bone him,” she muttered

“Better not be.  I thought you were rationed baby, saving up all your sugar for your best guy?”

“Steve…no fair, you know what talking like that does to me.  Don’t start my engine if you aren’t going to drive me home.”

“Well if my best girl is needing me,” he murmured in a low Brooklyn drawl, “I better do what I can for her, hmm?”

He proceeded to slide his pajama pants off and as he was sliding on a condom he saw Karen following suit.  They knew each other’s rhythms by now, and sex was easier than it had been in the early days.  Not to say that there were never awkward moments, but when they happened they didn’t derail the whole process.

Now that he knew what making love to Karen felt like he wondered how he’d managed to make it to their wedding night without this.  The answer was pretty simple, he _hadn’t_ known then.  He’d had no idea that sliding into her slick warmth felt like heaven, that when he hit that one spot inside and she clenched up he would see stars, or that when she finally came to pieces in his arms, shaking and gasping and flushed with pleasure that it was like looking at a masterpiece.  Now that he knew what it was like, there was no way he would ever willingly give up the chance to do this, so when Karen asked him to ‘drive her home’ he was more than eager.

But regardless of the quality or the number of climaxes he gave her, that phantom crease in her brow would not go away.  Despite the fact he’d been joking when he accused her of thinking of another man, he was genuinely worried that she couldn’t stop thinking.  Over-thinking was a serious problem with Karen.  If he let it go on, she wouldn’t get any sleep and once her sleep patterns were messed up, there went any hope of a happy Karen for a week.

Karen mused yet again how super soldier serum was a double edged blade.  It was great that Steve’s refractory period was so short, but on the other hand, she lost almost all grip on reality after the first six orgasms, and here he was stiff again.  She knew he was trying to drive thoughts of planning and missions out of her head, and some ornery little part of her wasn’t letting that happen.  No, sir, she was going to keep her ability to think no matter what he did, until he sucked a hicky on the ticklish spot on her hip-bone.

“Steve!”

“You going to try to actually sleep or do I have to do the other side?”

“I am trying, you know, but someone,” she glared at him, “keeps popping a boner.”

“You don’t worry about that, it isn’t critical, despite how good it feels when you do help out with it.  Just try to get some sleep for me, please?”

“Alright Steve, for you.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Asset, the Subject, That Soulless Thing.  No, none of those are him.  He is no-one’s asset but his own, no-one’s subject to be experimented on.  And he sure as hell had a soul, or else he wouldn’t hurt so badly when memory flashes of his time as a living weapon surface.  The Winter Soldier.  He rolled the name around in his head.  That’s one of the things he’d been referred to as.  It doesn’t fit quite right.  Neither did Sargent James Buchanan Barnes.  The ‘Soldier’ bit fit best.  He decides that will be who he is until he has time to track down someone who can help him find who he is.

He waits a week, and then returns to the safe house in the bank.  It was protocol in the event of a security breach.  They think he’s still obedient when he arrives and gives the access codes.  They’re so glad to have their weapon back they don’t notice the Soldier sticking a stolen USB card into a slot on the chair.  The damn chair stole his humanity before, but now it might help restore it.  It’s a hunch, a guess, but maybe it holds records of what they took out of his head.  He sits, and lets them shave his face (the mask never sat right over beards) and his chest (the electrodes they sometimes used after missions required clean, hairless skin), and then he hears the beep.  He grabs the USB stick and tucks it in his pocket, then with speed and efficiency he kills all the technicians. Crack, _crack_ , **crack** , _**crack**_.  Four broken necks.  It’s fast, they don’t even have time to beg for their lives, and it’s supposed to be painless. If so then it’s a damn sight better than the godforsaken chair ever was.  Without remorse he drags the bodies to the back wall, shoots the chair half a dozen times in critical looking places, then takes a wrench to a yellow pipe on the back wall, above the bodies, labeled with warning signs.  The Soldier tapes a strike anywhere match to the bottom of the vault door before gently closing it.  The next Hydra agent to open the door would start a conflagration.

The Soldier waits another week before going to his secondary handler’s office.  The man is a detective, and some part of him that vaguely recalls penny comics about a detective seethes that the two can be described by the same word.  He’s shaking; enough that his hands are unreliable weapons and everything else might get him arrested.  He’s never been out of cryo this long and he’s starting to feel weak and shaky.  Everyone assumes he’s a drug addict, so when the handler takes him down to the coffee place to get something to eat, nobody worries.  He eats the pastry the handler puts in front of him, remembering that food is a thing he can get now.  No more bland nutritional goop or intravenous feedings.

He keeps his face as dull and lifeless as he can, tries to hide his smile as the man dumps five sugar packets into his coffee.  Or rather, three sugar packets and two packets labeled sugar that contain a potent powdered neurotoxin.  He might live, but it will be a life on feeding tubes and a respirator with an IQ akin to his shoe size.

It’s the last time he’ll be able to use coming in as a way to get close. He plans a car crash for the politician’s aide (she drank like a fish, it would not be unusual) and a mugging for the doctor.  A part of him remembers doctors talking about sterilizing someone, a flash of gold hair and a smile like the sun, and when he comes back from the memory he’s put a full clip into the doctor’s torso.  That many shots is overkill for staging a mugging, so he hauls the body to a trash bin and dumps it with all the grace of an amateur.  At least no-one will suspect a trained assassin, and the doctor was an ass, so somebody probably had motive.  That’s it for DC, he knows.  The rest were stationed at S.H.I.E.L.D. and long since taken into custody.  Time to pull on the thread of the USB stick and what it contained.  Hydra was going to pay for what they’d done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> Teaser:
> 
> “No, I think it’s a different highly trained assassin with a grudge against Hydra,” she snarked. “Of course I think it’s him.”


	10. Operations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tracking down Bucky Barnes isn't nearly as relaxing a vacation as Karen was hoping, but the Soldier might just bring the search to an end, if he can decide to trust.
> 
> Warning: cliffhanger!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to tamarama and naruturd for commenting.
> 
>  
> 
> Feedback is worth it's weight in gold, so feel free to drop a comment or kudos below.

Three months, twelve countries, and twenty nine missions later, Steve and Karen were spending an afternoon going over the latest information gleaned from the Hydra bases Steve and Sam had taken apart.  Unfortunately for Karen’s nerves, Sam had gone back to DC for a family thing two weeks ago, and Steve had been running ops alone, which Karen hated.  It was a bone of contention between the two and the only way Karen knew how not to snap at her husband was to ignore it.  Thus, she was reading the news on her laptop and steadfastly failing to notice Steve in planning mode when an article caught her eye, and she started putting the pieces together.  Her mind raced as it traced the connections, her fingers flipping through her notes fast enough to give her paper cuts as she double checked names and compared dates.  When she finally put it together she had to take a deep breath to steady herself.

“Hey, Steve,” Karen called over her shoulder with more nonchalance than she truly felt, “Do you remember that gas main explosion in DC right before we left for Kamchatka?  Took out a bank?”

“Yeah, I remember,” he said absentmindedly as he finished drawing the plan of attack on a base in Libya, a tricky operation due to possible Ten Rings involvement in the area.  A few moments later he put down the blue thin-point sharpie and turned his full attention back to his wife, who was giving him a fond look of patience.  “Why?”

“Because we’ve been working our way through Bucky’s past starting from 1945, and someone else has been eliminating targets in the other direction.  The bank that the blast took out was a Hydra safe house, and three people I now know were Hydra handlers died over the two weeks after the Helicarriers crashed, and four Hydra scientists went missing around the same time. The thing that made it obvious was when _our_ target list started getting attacked.  By the way, that cell in Morocco you were dreading?  Don’t worry about it; it just got fire-bombed.  Waste of intel, but I think our mystery helper already knows where he’s headed.”

“You mean you think it’s him.”

“No, I think it’s a different highly trained assassin with a grudge against Hydra who happened to start his campaign a week after the fall of S.H.E.I.L.D.,” she snarked.  “Of course I think it’s him.”

“No need to get like that, Karen…”

“Sorry, but it’s been months of chasing history, ghosts and urban legends and now we’ve got some idea he’s out there but we have no idea where he’s headed next and I’m just barely keeping my head above water with this stuff.  I’m good, but I’m not trained to deal with some of the things you bring me and I want to go home.  I want my bed and no more reports calling people subjects and my normal routine and a distinct lack of people shoving food in my face saying it is vital to my experience of their country that I eat it.  I gained ten pounds in Italy, and we were only there four days!”

“You know I don’t mind…”

“It doesn’t matter that _you_ don’t mind Steven, it matters that _I_ mind.  It matters that I mind that you’ve been going into bases on your own, it matters that I mind that all I can do is tell you where to try next, it matters that I haven’t freaking found him when he’s been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs since _April_.” She slammed her laptop closed without bothering to shut it down properly.  “I don’t know what my role here is anymore.  I don’t know why you even need me at all when someone like Nat could do so much more for you.”  She bit her lip and turned her face away from him, telling him clear as if she’d said it that she was about to cry.  He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.

“Honey, you are so important, in ways that Nat could never be.  You keep me going and I don’t do half the stupid stuff that pops into my head when I know you’ll get that disappointed look that puts me in my place.  Nat actually induces some of the stupid, because she has a very odd sense of humor.  And Nat might be able to watch my six, but she’s not going to hold me when I cry after seeing some of the experiments that go on in those bases.  You are the whole reason I made it this far without giving up.”

“Really?” she mumbled into his chest.

“Really.  Do you need me to put off Libya until later, or are you alright on your own tonight?”

“Go, it’s time-sensitive and you and I both know it.  I’ll stay in and give myself a mani-pedi.  Do some self-care.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Steve was downloading the contents of the biggest computer when he heard footsteps.  The base had been cleared, there were only the two guards and he’d taken both of them down.  He turned from the banks of screens and drew his gun, pulling the shield across his body.  The movements couldn’t have made much noise, but the footsteps paused.

On the other side of the wall separating the data room from the hallway, the Soldier listened carefully.  He’d heard the soft slide of metal against leather, so he knew the man was armed, but he’d also heard the near-silent ring of vibranium as a shield was drawn into place.  The man on the bridge, and on the Helicarrier, and from the museum.  The Captain.  He wasn’t ready to meet him yet, the Soldier decided.  He had memories, soft light and a wheezing shape under blankets, fires and explosions and ‘I’ve got your six’ in a voice that could almost be his, but he didn’t have enough.  Not yet.  He turned and padded away on soft feet.

Steve was torn between following the phantom footsteps, and staying with the download.  He paused for only a moment, but it was enough that the other occupant of the base had disappeared.  Where and how Steve didn’t know, but whoever had made those noises was as gone as if he-or it- had never been there.  Like a ghost.  Recalling his own ghost, he returned to the computer and took the drive from the slot and headed back to Karen.

The Soldier followed the tan jeep back to a small airstrip, where it was a simple matter of climbing up the landing gear to hitch a ride on the plane the Captain was taking.  It was tiny and cramped and had he not had the metal arm he could never have held on long enough.  The one benefit of the tiny plane was that the Captain could not fly high enough to freeze or suffocate the Soldier.  After a jarring landing the Soldier slipped off the airfield and followed the Captain back to a small house, where he was greeted by a woman.  She’s assessing how operational he is.  He gives her a hard drive.  She administers praise, and reward.  She must be his handler, although she’s a nicer handler than any he can recall, free with physical contact and very convincing emotional reward.  She’ll know more about the Captain than any book or museum exhibit.  He just had to wait.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Steve and Karen took a few days after the Libya operation to just be together.  They lounged in bed and had truly mind-blowing sex until Karen declared that she needed to replenish her energy.  Steve responded by making pancakes in their rental’s tiny kitchen.  They read books and watched movies together, as Steve still needed to watch Star Wars, despite many people telling him it was necessary cultural knowledge.  The revelation of Darth Vader’s relationship to Luke Skywalker had him face-palming.  Karen paused the film to look him over.

“What?  No shock, no outrage?  What’s going on in your head?”

“Guy in a mask, previously thought to be a bad guy, turns out to be a close relative of the hero?  I kinda know where Luke is standing is all.”

“Fair enough.  Wait till we watch the prequels, then the resemblance gets clearer, at least superficially.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Captain did not leave the house for three days.  Then he assumed a pattern of running each morning, leaving his handler alone for an hour at minimum.  That time frame was not sufficient to his needs.  The Soldier waited a week for his quarry to be alone for a lengthier time, until the Captain went out one afternoon in tac gear and fully armed.  A mission would give him ample time to have his questions answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
>  
> 
> Warning, Teaser Imminent  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> "Handler?! I'm not his handler!"


	11. Heart to Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Soldier finally has his talk with the Captain's "handler".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to naruturd for commenting. Comments help speed up the process, which is why you're getting this now, and not in 2015.
> 
> Also, Happy *insert winter holiday here* everybody!

Karen McCann was many things, but blind was not one of them.  She hated sending her husband on ops without back-up, but she could see how much he hated not doing anything.  So when Clint called and offered to watch Steve’s six on a mission or two (thank you Natasha), Karen happily helped the two of them plan a raid on a research facility in Morroco over Skype.

“Just so you know, if we wind up in Casablanca, I’m totally going to say here’s looking at you kid.”

“You’re daffy if you think you’re Rick.  If we were in _Casablanca_ I’d be Bogey, and you’d be Bergman”

“Holy crap, you got the joke!”

“I watched the movie on opening night, Clint.  It came out in ’42.  Pop culture references weren’t invented in the eighties, you know.  And it’s more like ‘of all of the illegal and unethical research facilities, in all the non-extradition countries, in all the world, they burn down mine.’  But we’re getting side tracked.  Let’s go over our plan for evacuating the civilians.”

It only took a few days to iron out the plan, as they re-used one from a base hidden under a sweat-shop in Xi’an, China.  Except in China they had passed out references to a Stark Industries factory with much better quality of work environment (Pepper had insisted when they called her about it).  Now they were dealing with an animal-testing lab and after watching a documentary about what happens in that sort of place Steve was all for rescuing the animals and letting the people fend for themselves.  Clint talked him down from his more extreme ideas, but they still had plans to give all the animals to a no-kill shelter.

Plans finalized and Clint already on his way, Steve left for the quinjet and Karen made a cup of hot cocoa to calm her nerves.  *Steve’s going to be fine.  This is a mid-level risk target and he’ll have Clint for backup.*  A small click caught her attention and she turned to see what appeared to be a hobo closing her window behind him.  But despite the disheveled appearance and the smell, she knew better than to assume this was some random home invasion.  She squinted at him and imagined away the beard and the long greasy hair tied back with a rubber band, picturing the square jaw and cheeky grin from an old photograph.

“Hello.”

“You’re not frightened?”

“No.  Fear isn’t particularly useful to me right now.  Either you have broken Hydra’s control of you and you won’t hurt me because you are a good person and I’m an innocent, or you’re still under Hydra’s control, which I seriously doubt given the swath of destruction behind you, and in that case, I’m going to die.  So which is it?  Longest serving prisoner of war or world’s most lethal assassin?”

“I’m not Hydra’s Asset anymore.  They took…they need to pay for what they’ve done.”

“Then I have no reason to fear you.  I fight Hydra too, in my own way.”

“With him, the Captain,” he said it in a way that was half a statement and half a question.  “I saw you, after he returned from a mission.  He gave you something from the base, and you gave him positive reinforcement.”  He paused.  “You’re a good handler.”

“Handler?! I'm not his _handler_!” Karen put a hand over her heart, appalled.  “I’m his wife!  We’re partners!  I’m just not equipped to be out in the field with him, so I do the analytical side of things.”

“You give him targets and reward him when he succeeds.  You are his handler.  A good handler, because he seems happy and he has a high success rate from what I can tell.  It’s easier, when you have a good handler.”  Karen recognized the stubborn tilt of his jaw, even under the beard.  The handler thing would have to pass for now, at least.

“So, have you come just to tell me I’m a good handler or are you here for something else?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

“You know him, best of anyone, because good handlers know about their assets.  I need to know who he is, because who he is…” he scrunched his right hand in his hair in frustration “it’s all tangled up in who I am, and I need to know who I am.”

“And you can’t just ask him because?”

“I’m not ready yet.  I know he remembers someone I’m not and I can’t be again, and I’m not ready for him to see me.  Even when I was fighting him, shooting him, he insisted I was this Bucky person and I don’t think he’s ready to accept that that isn’t me.  But I still need to know.”

“Alright.  Have a seat and I’ll get you something to drink.  What do you want?”

The Soldier froze.  Choice was new enough to him that he still had trouble with it on his own, but a handler asking him for a choice?  Handlers didn’t do that.  Not any he’d had.  She looked concerned.

“Sit at the table ok?  Look at me and take deep breaths.  It’s going to be alright.”  He sat at the table and took the deep breaths as she ordered, but her face was not angry, not like the last handler when he had problems.  This handler would never slap him.  “It was asking what you want, wasn’t it?  I remember being fresh off the streets and not believing I could have things like jelly on my bagels, or that I could ask for seconds.  I froze up like that once at an all you can eat buffet.”  He nodded.  “Ok, we’ll start small.  Hot drink or cold drink?”

“Hot, please, not cold, please not cold.”  His mind revealed to him a new memory, a hose pumping icy water on him mercilessly, because he had failed.  The phantom cold ate at him and he shivered slightly.

“Alright, I’m going to make you some hot cocoa, because I already have the mix out, so it’ll be fast.”  She was already moving to the counter where she measured out a scoop of brown powder and mixed it with steaming water from a kettle.  She stirred it for a little, then handed him the mug, a blue ceramic art piece, sculpted with a green dragon curling around it, the tail forming the handle.  It was strange, this handler giving him a hot drink in a work of beauty.  He was not accustomed to being trusted with delicate things. 

He discreetly sniffed the cup, trying to detect any poison, but she saw it and gestured to hand her the cup.  Reluctantly, he handed over the warmth.  She took a drink from the cup and handed it back.  She did it without hesitation, so the cup was probably safe.  Trusting her was a hard step, but if he didn’t he’d never untangle the knot of who he used to be.  He sipped the drink, careful of the heat.  The taste was something else, sweet and rich and with a slight bite something in the back of his mind called cinnamon.

“What do you want to know?  I’ll tell you what I can, but I’m not sure where you want me to start.”

“The museum and the books said I was his friend when we were little.  Was that true?”

“Yes.  You two were best of friends, from what he’s told me.  He said you saw him when nobody else did.”

“He was smaller?”

“Five foot four and a hundred pounds soaking wet, if that.  You know, I met him when he was small too, about my height and all angles and fierceness and nobility.  There was an accident and he turned small again for a while, and that was when we met and fell in love.  Both of us had to work on some self-image issues before we finally got our heads on straight, but when we did, it was magic, despite being stuck in the woods of a country ruled by a supervillain.”

“And I was, I was important to him?”

“You were very important to him.  You kept him alive when anyone with his illnesses should have died; he told me that you worked every job you could so that you could afford medicine every winter when he got sick.  You were loyal and strong and he looked up to you.  He disobeyed orders to free you, saving over four hundred men just to get you to safety.  If he hadn’t done that he’d have lived and died as an actor, pretending heroics, not doing them.  If you weren’t as important to him as you are the whole of World War Two might have gone differently.”

“I shaped the century….” he said softly.  He rubbed his head and fought back the wave of memories that clashed together in his mind.  He shoved the empty mug back from him, out of the way if he lost control and lashed out.  “I shaped the century,” he said louder.  As he stood he shook his head and backed away from the table.  “He said I shaped the century, needed me to do it one more time, and he, he put me in the chair and….”

“Bucky, look at me.  Look at my eyes and take deep breaths.  Remember where you are, and relax, I’ve got you.  You’re safe here; nobody’s going to put you in the chair.”  She paused, trying to think through her own therapy sessions for anything that would help with what looked to be a full on PTSD attack.  “May I touch you?”

“I…maybe, I’m…it might be alright, but…”

“Ok, I’m going to put a hand on your arm.  I want you to focus on how my hand feels.”  She waited a few minutes before asking, “is it warm?”

“Yes, yes it’s warm.”  His eyes softened just a bit from the wide-eyed panic.

“Is it holding you firmly or loosely?”

“It’s…” he took a slow breath in and let it out smoothly.  “It’s firm enough that I can feel it, but also gentle.  Handlers aren’t gentle, not the ones I’ve had.”

“Then you’ve had shit handlers.  Everybody needs a little gentle.”  She checked his face for the fear that had gripped him.  “Do you feel safe?”

“I am operational and the environment is not hostile.”

Karen’s heart broke a little at those words.  They sounded like tweets from the Mars rover, not words from her husband’s best friend.  But they did indicate that he wasn’t caught in the loop of panic and fear he had been.  She gently guided him to the sofa, the least chair-like sitting place and draped a blanket over his shoulders.

“You’re safe here.  You can stay as long as you want.”

“When does the Captain return?”

“Tomorrow evening, he should be home in time for dinner.”

“I’ll go before then.  I’m not ready.”

“That’s alright.  He’ll be happy you’re alive and working through your issues, even if you don’t come face to face.  Why don’t you lay down for a little, I’ll wake you when dinner is ready.”

“Thank you.”  The words were soft, but Karen heard them and she smiled as Bucky curled up on the sofa to nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> No teaser this week as I am riding the edge of the avalanche creativity wise, and have as much idea of what comes next as you do.


	12. New Handler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meal and a long awaited conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to naruturd, ilu darling!

The Soldier woke to the smell of simmering meat and tomato sauce.  His gut clenched, reminding him it had been outside optimal parameters for time between meals.  Without a handler to give him nutritional sustenance he’d had to experiment to find the right rhythm.  The Captain’s handler was singing, clearly in the middle if not near the end of the song

“Now I don't know where the moral is, or where the song should end.  But I wonder just how many wars are fought between good friends? And those who give the orders are not the ones to die, it's Bell, and O’Malley, and the likes of you and I.  There were roses, roses, there were roses, and the tears of a people ran together.”

“Do you sing often?”  He wouldn’t have asked of any other handler, but this one was different.  She gave him choices and served him hot drinks in pretty cups and didn’t slap him or yell when he had an episode.

“When I’m cooking, yes.  I use it to keep from getting impatient with things like water boiling.  I can stop if you want me to…”

“No!  I mean, it’s soothing, I don’t dislike it, so you can, if you want.”

“Do you sing? I could pick something you could sing along with.”

“I don’t know if I can sing or not.  I can’t remember ever trying.  It isn’t exactly a skillset I needed.”

“Then I’ll just sing one on my own.  Dinner is ready in about half an hour, so you might want to wash up.  And for god’s sake put the hoodie in the hamper, if it goes one more day without washing, visible organisms are going to develop on it.  I know from experience that you do not want to wear an article of clothing that has identifiable species of lower life forms growing on it.  Bad things happen.  I’ll do the wash before you leave.”

The Soldier stood for a moment, disoriented by the casual tone of her voice.  She accepted that he would go to another room and return.  She offered him water he could make as hot as he liked, but what had he done to earn it?  The only time he could recall a hot wash was after an assassination of a weapons mogul.  They’d been very happy he did that, for some reason.

“Oh, the bathroom is down that hall, first door on the right.”  Although she’d misread his hesitation, her words did spur him to move as indicated.  As he left he heard the sounds of the handler singing.

“Oh how do you do young Willie McBride?  Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside, and rest for a while in the warm summer sun?  I’ve been walking all day and I’m nearly done.”

In the bathroom he took off the grey hoodie he’d had with him since DC and put it in the wicker basket between the tub and the sink.  He washed his hands with the liquid soap in the bottle by the sink, and then, because the water was wonderfully warm and she hadn’t said he couldn’t, he washed his flesh arm all the way up to the sleeve of the tee shirt he still wore.  He scratched the beard he’d grown since the last day in the bank.  He had kept it because it helped him hide his face, but he wasn’t going to be hiding much longer.  He wondered if the Captain’s handler would want him to shave.  He didn’t think she was the type of handler to make her assets wear masks, the Captain never did, so maybe she didn’t care.  Then again, the Captain was also clean shaven.

Suddenly, a shout drew him to the kitchen, franticly searching for the enemy.  There was no enemy, just the handler running her hand under the water of the tap.

“Sorry, Bucky, I didn’t mean to frighten you, but I got a slight burn off the skillet I was browning the beef in.  Spaghetti is almost done, just need to get the rest of the beef in the sauce.”  She slid her hands into silicone oven mitts that were molded to look like frog faces before lifting the pan with the browned meat over a pot with a thick red sauce in it.  Stabilizing with one hand, she used the other to scrape out the contents of the pan with a wooden spoon into the red sauce.  “You want to pull out plates and silverware?  You need the drawer to the left of the sink, cabinet above the sink to the right.”

The Soldier wasn’t sure about this new handler.  She was kind, and gave specific instructions and seemed to understand him even in the grip of an episode, but she was soft, and hadn’t searched him for weapons.  She wouldn’t have found any, his conditioning required him to disarm before contact with a handler, and even if she hadn’t said she’d be his handler, he was really hoping it would work out.

Karen served the pasta out, giving herself a normal amount and Bucky a large portion.  She knew from experience how fast super soldiers ran out of calories to burn.  She was always ordering enough food for five people from takeout places and cooking meals best suited to feeding an army.  After watching Bucky inhale half his plate, he finally slowed down.  She took that as a sign she could talk to him.

“So, what else do you want to know?”

“What was Bucky like?”

“Well, keep in mind this is second hand information, I never knew you before today.  But Steve said you were cocky and suave and witty in public, but it was a veneer, or maybe more like a mask.  You had some pretty deep insecurities and acting like you ruled the world was the only way you got through it.  He didn’t tell me what the insecurities were, just that you had them.”

The soldier paused to integrate this new information, and then continued his questioning.

“What about family?”

“Your parents were fairly traditional, Your mom stayed at home with you and your siblings, your favorite was your sister Rebecca, and your father served in the 107th before he died in a training accident shortly before the War. That’s why you were a Sergeant when you shipped out, because he’d given you sharpshooter training prior to enlisting.”

“And during the War?”

“Steve said you were different, less cocky on the outside and harder instead, but also calmer.  He thought it was because of what happened at the Hydra base he rescued you from, or just the usual horrors of war.”

“You’re a very strange handler.”

“Oh?  That might be because I’m not one, but I admit I’m curious.  How am I strange?”

“You didn’t know my intentions, but you weren’t afraid.  You gave me options of hot over cold, you sing, but mostly you give me all this information about your asset’s vulnerabilities.”

“I’m giving you information about yourself.”

“About Bucky, I’m not him and I might never be him.  I might not want to be.  I might want to know about it so I could get close to the Captain and finish the mission.  It would be easy, with what you gave me, to pretend to be him, to get close, and once I even showed a little bit of Bucky, the Captain wouldn’t even fight back.  He’d look me in the eyes as I shot him in the heart and tell me he’s with me till the end of the line.”

“Is that what happened in DC?”

“Well, I was punching him, but mostly.”

“I see,” she said, her voice hard and icy.  “I’ll deal with that later.  But as to why I’m telling you about Bucky, I trust you.  I’ve learned to trust my gut with people.  Let me tell you a little something about my life.  My mom kicked us out when I was ten.  Ten years old and my sister, only thirteen, trying to raise me and keep us fed and clothed.  I learned not to trust people, then I learned that you can trust some people, and then I learned how to tell the difference.  I also learned that family doesn’t end with blood ties, and you, sorry, Bucky may as well be Steve’s brother, which would make him kin to me and mine.  And you’re right, you may never be him again, but you are making an effort at not being what they made you, so I’m hopeful for something in between.”

“I’ll try, I promise I’ll try.  I’m not ready for meeting the Captain, but the strain of not having a handler… I’m getting more and more like the Asset again and I can’t do that, not ever again.  Will you be my handler?  Even though I can’t be around your other asset yet?”

“If that’s what you need.  First order of business, shower.  Feel free to stay in as long as you like; this place has a tankless system so you won’t run out of hot water.  Steve insisted on it, he hates the cold.  You can use any of the products in the caddy on the wall.  Clothes in the hamper, I’ll bring you fresh ones from Steve’s closet.”

“Will I need to be shaved?”

Karen furrowed her brow at that question.  The syntax was off, and the pleading look was unusual for someone asking about facial hair.

“If you want to shave or trim up, you can, the tools for that are in the medicine chest behind the mirror.  If you don’t, then leave it be.  As long as it’s clean, you can have a full out Moses beard.”

He nodded his head rapidly, and then quickly disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Karen to clear the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two songs that Karen sings are There Were Roses by Tommy Sands ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJTPV2clKZs ), and Green Fields of France as done by the Dropkick Murphys ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDaQfLFHYjI )
> 
> I chose the first because of the theme of two friends on opposite sides dying in a war. Very Steve and Soldier. I chose the second because the song is about a young soldier who died and honestly, Bucky did die in those alps, and sort of like a fucked up phoenix he rose from the ashes as the Soldier.
> 
> Teaser Warning! (yes I got it together to give a teaser)
> 
>  
> 
> The Soldier’s breath came fast and rough, but he didn’t feel like he was getting any air. He really didn’t want to upset the new handler; he actually liked and trusted this one, and life without one was hard living.


	13. Damages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky isn't coping too well. Two sides of his trauma, and how Karen responds to them.
> 
> WARNING: PTSD AND SEVERE DISASSOCIATION. I am earning a spot in writer hell for this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, thank you to the guests who kudo'd me, and much love to naruturd for commenting. Also, you owe her this chapter because otherwise it would have been two chapters and I would have spent waaaaaaay more time waffling without the guidance I get. <3
> 
> Chapter specific warnings: the Soldier has a panic attack and two extreme reactions as a result of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). One is disassociation trained into him by the evil squidnazis, the other is strong fight response to feeling confined. 
> 
> Specific disclaimer: Karen has to help him through both attacks, but while she has depression, she does not have PTSD and so her responses aren't necessarily the most appropriate. They work, but I would advise anyone with a loved one with PTSD to talk with a mental health professional about what is the best way to help someone suffering disassociation or fight/flight response.

The soldier spent nearly an hour under the hot (almost scalding, he turned it up so high) stream of water, just standing, and then another half an hour working the hot pink gel from the shower caddy through his hair, scraping his nails along his scalp to be extra certain he was clean.  The suds filled the shower stall with a fruity scent he couldn’t identify.  He rinsed it out thoroughly, taking the moment to stand under the pounding jet of hot water.  Glorious.  Then, following the instructions on the back of the matching bottle, he coated his hair in a thick pastel pink cream.  While it set, he used the orange gel and a washcloth to scrub his body.  He hadn’t realized how dirty he had gotten, until he saw the grey water circling the drain.  Even though he was fairly certain that he’d gotten it all, he scrubbed all over once more, just to be sure.

With his hair rinsed free of the thick conditioner, he stepped out of the shower stall and dried off with the ridiculously thick fluffy towels.  He took extra care on drying his left arm, using the corner of a hand towel to get in all the grooves between plates. It would need proper seeing-to soon; perhaps his new handler could find someone trustworthy to look after the inner workings of the metal appendage.  Hopefully that someone wouldn’t require him to be unconscious for the procedure.

He wrapped one of the longer towels about his waist and turned to confront the mirror.  In the cabinet behind the mirror were the tools for removing his beard, if he wanted to.  Did he want to?  Would it bring punishment if he did or didn’t?  She had said he _could_ have a beard, not that she _would rather_ he had one.  Was it a test?

Hands trembling he reached out toward the container labeled Shaving Cream.  The hand did not make contact, pulled back at the last minute.  The Soldier’s breath came fast and rough, but he didn’t feel like he was getting any air.  He really didn’t want to upset the new handler; he actually liked and trusted this one, and life without one was hard living.  To shave or not?  He’d gotten nothing from her about which she’d prefer.  All his half remembered training from the Soviets was useless now.  She was a canny one, his new handler.  His hand reached for the shaving cream again, and again it was yanked back.

He thought, he assessed, and he looked at it from all the angles.  If she wanted him shaven, and he didn’t it was an easy fix.  Not so if it was the other way around.  But she had told him where to find shaving tools, when she could have just said “no” to get what she wanted.  It must be a test, and the Soldier would have to pass it.

The Captain.  It always came back to the Captain, didn’t it?  He was her asset, and she seemed to approve of him, enough that there was a picture in the kitchen of the two of them on a beach, sunburnt and smiling.  The Captain was clean shaven.  It was a fragile limb to walk out on, but the Soldier needed a handler, and he needed _this_ handler if he was ever going to put back together the scattered pieces of who he was.

The Soldier squared his shoulders and reached for the can again.  This time he made it, but his breathing sped up and his heart felt uncomfortably large in his chest as he tried to operate the button on top.  He muscled through the shaking to lather his right cheek, before reaching for a razor.  It took another few minutes to get the courage to take the plastic guard off the business end.  He looked in the mirror and promptly lost it as all the doubts and fears and *oh God, what if this is wrong what if she hates it what if she won’t be my handler, what if, what if, what if* crowded into his head and all sensation was lost in the tumult of emotion.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Bucky had been in the bathroom for three hours, and Karen was sure she’d heard the water shut off after two.  Concerned, she knocked on the door.

“Bucky?  Sargent Barnes?  James?  Are you still alive in there?”  She received no response.  All the scenarios of what could go wrong putting a guy with pretty obvious mental health concerns alone in a room like a bathroom ran through her head.  *Oh, God, there’s drain cleaner under the sink and scissors in the cabinet, and I told him to look there for them.  Steve may never forgive me if I get his best friend killed.*   

“I’m coming in, hope you’re decent,” she called, waiting a beat of three to let him get decent or respond.  She opened the door and found him on the floor, a safety razor in one hand and half a face of shaving cream, crying.  The tears had made tracks in the white on his right cheek. “Oh, my, what’s going on?”

“I didn’t know if you wanted me to shave or not and I…I tried to be good, but there were no clear directions.  Please, please don’t punish me, no cold please, no chair...”

“No cold, no chair, I promise you that.”  She took the razor from his shaking hand.  It may be a safety razor but she knew how much damage could be done with those, firsthand from a rather bad panic attack in the shower when she was fifteen.  “I want what you want.  If you want to be clean shaven, then I will help you shave if you can’t stop shaking.  If you want to keep the beard, I’ll help you wash the shaving cream off your face.  I can’t make this decision for you.  Your beard, your body, your choice.”

“I…maybe…” each word was pulled grudgingly from his mind and dragged from his throat as he fought the compulsion to let her choose.  “Shave…I want…ugh!”  It was a battle he’d have to retreat from.  The conditioning was strong, too strong.

“You want to shave?”

He nodded.

“Then I want you to shave.  Do you want help with it?”  His hands were still shaking, and she knew from what Steve told her that the new styles of razor were hard to figure out for someone accustomed to a straight razor.

He shook his head, then nodded, then shook all over like he had a chill.  He held his shaking hands up, palms up in supplication.

“Ok, I’ll help; I don’t want you hurting yourself.”  She helped him sit on the edge of the tub and wrapped a second towel around his shoulders to keep him warm.  Gently she began to shave him and his tremors calmed.  His eyes went soft and near-lifeless, the light fading from them, which worried her.  “Hey, are you alright?”

He blinked owlishly at her.  It was as though the words made no sense.  “Tell me how you feel.”

“I am operational.”  When that netted only a concerned look, he continued.  “This is within acceptable parameters, Handler.”

“Ooh boy.”  Knowing some of how they’d messed with his brain, Karen knew he was trying to tell her he was ok, but the phrasing told her the opposite.  Somehow he’d spun into the conditioned state, subservient to his handler, which was now her.  She had no clue how to undo it, so, despite the crawly feeling on her back, she lathered up the other side of his face.  “Tell me if you ever are out of ‘acceptable parameters’, ok?”

“Yes, Handler.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Clean, shaven and given a pair of Steve’s sweatpants and one of his long-sleeved Henleys, Karen finally tucked the man formerly known as Bucky into the twin bed in the second bedroom.  After the shave it had taken a while for the lifelessness to leave his eyes, and she didn’t even suggest sleep until it had.

She wasn’t sure how to process being his handler.  He seemed very insistent on it, so it must be important, but she had no clue how to be a handler.  He thought she was Steve’s handler, but that was so far from the truth it was laughable.  Well, she guessed that she could treat him like a friend until an issue came up that he needed guidance, like when he had a meltdown over shaving.  She needed information more than anything.  She needed to know what handlers did.  Natasha would know what he was expecting; he’d had his initial conditioning done by the Soviets.  But Natasha was gone, disappeared into nowhere.  Well, maybe not ‘nowhere’, exactly, she _had_ been the one to send Clint to help when Sam had gone home.  Clint could also tell her what a S.H.I.E.L.D. handler did, so until she could get Natasha, Clint would have to do.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Soldier woke suddenly to darkness.  Darkness and warmth and constriction around his limbs, holding him down.  He struggled to free himself, thrashing and cussing and fighting with an unchecked fury he’d never known.  The soldier was always calm in battle, always easily controlling his movements, never feeling emotions.  Then, when all seemed lost and his mind was solid rage and fear and all the things they kept from him, a light turned on above him.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Karen was sleeping in the room she and Steve had picked out, not quite a master bedroom, but large enough for the queen-sized bed.  She was having a particularly nice dream about her and Steve and a can of whipped cream when she was woken by a shout.

“Steve!”  For a moment she thought she had shouted, although she had never shouted during a sex dream before.  Then she realized the voice was low, masculine, and thick with the Brooklyn drawl she loved.

She ran to the second bedroom and knocked on the door.  “You ok?”

“Fucking bastards, I’ll see you rot in Hell, damn you!”

“Bucky!” she yelled as she threw open the door and flicked on the lights, ready to fight, as much as she could be in pajamas.  There was no-one else in the room, just Bucky in a blanket burrito, struggling to free himself.  “Easy, there,” she tried, hoping to calm him down.  He looked at her and while his eyes weren’t the soft, lifeless things that had scared her after the shaving incident, neither were they altogether the eyes of the man who asked her questions and drank hot cocoa and ate spaghetti with her.  There was a light in them, but it was an unhealthy one.  She’d seen a light like that before, in the eyes of Bruce Banner right before he stuck a tranquilizer dart in his own arm to keep from Hulking.  It was rage, uncut, uncontrolled.  It would be a very bad idea to touch Bucky now, even to untangle him.  Especially to untangle him, because then she’d have a battle-happy Winter Soldier in her house.  “Take a deep breath?” she tried hesitantly.  His struggles only increased.  A thought crossed her mind, that if he did this with any of his previous handlers they would yell at him, or punish him in other ways, and although she would rather die than hurt him the way they did, maybe some ingrained part of him would respond better to firmness.  She thought about the times she had to snap Steve out of bad memories.

“WAKE UP, SOLDIER!” She shouted, with her best vocal projection.  She even copied the pronunciation of ‘soldier’ from when Steve had imitated his drill sergeant, turning the word into sold-jer.  The effect was instantaneous.  Bucky stilled, his eyes fading from the burning intensity of rage to his usual grey-blue.  Before they could fade further, she crossed the room and helped lift his torso and unwrap him from the blankets.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Do you need to anyway?”

“No, it was just the covers.”

“Alright, I’ll let you get back to sleep, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> No teaser, this chapter drained me (I triggered myself whilst editing the damn thing) so I don't really know where I'm going next. Come to my tumblr for kittens and bunnies if you too feel the need of happy things!


	14. Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky gets some memories back, Karen gives him a mission, and Steve is put out that he missed seeing Bucky. Clint just wants to take a nap, but fate has other plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a note, a passage in italics is a flashback of Bucky's.

Karen woke to the smell of burning toast.  Stumbling blearily into the kitchen, she found Bucky waving a dishtowel over the toaster.  Deciding it was too early to deal with a WWII vet burning toast in her kitchen, she went to the fridge, pulled out a jug of Steve’s cold brewed coffee, poured a large glass of it, and proceeded to chug it.

Properly caffeinated, Karen helped him with the toaster.  Eggs had already been scrambled and bacon fried, so she wasn’t too mad at him for the burning of the toast.  They ate in silence, and before she could clear the dishes, Bucky had already grabbed them and was taking them to the kitchen.

The Soldier was unaware of this new-yet-old protocol, but it was very firm in his mind.  If the last meal he ate was both cooked and cleaned up after by the same person, the next time he ate with them he must cook and clean as well.  Otherwise, the cook never cleaned.  He paused while scrubbing a plate as a flash of golden blond hair and fever-red cheeks invaded his mind.

_“I can clean up, Buck.  You got work at the docks in half an hour!”_

_“You cooked, ya punk, the cook doesn’t clean!  My Ma raised me better’n that.  And_ your _Ma would have my hide if I didn’t send you back to bed, you’re getting sick again.”_

_“Bucky…”_

“Bucky?” a mellow female voice intruded on the memory.

“What?” the Soldier asked, blinking in confusion.

“Are you ok?  You were staring into space and your hands are in steaming hot water.  Literally.”

He looked down at the dishwater, where, sure enough, steam was rising from the grey sudsy liquid.  “I’m fine.”  The heat felt good, not bad, but if his handler thought he needed to get his hands out then he would.  He pulled the dish up out of the water to finish scrubbing and then rinsed it.  The dishtowel was missing and while he searched for it, the plate was taken from his hands and dried.  His handler was sneaky, and he approved.

They washed and dried the dishes together, and when his handler started humming, he was surprised to find himself singing along.

“It's still the same old story.  A fight for love and glory.  A case of do or die.  The world will always welcome lovers, as time goes by.”

Karen kept humming, listening to his husky baritone as they finished the dishes.  When they were done, he looked sort of confused by what had just happened.

“Well, now we know you can sing.  So that’s one fact reclaimed.”

“I suppose.  What was that song and why do I know it?”

“As Time Goes By.  It’s from Casablanca.  I was reminded of it because Steve and Clint were cracking Casablanca jokes during mission planning.  You probably saw it with Steve, back in ’42.  Also I think it was just a really popular song for a while there.  I can look it up on Wikipedia if you want.”

They spent the rest of the morning looking up things that would have been popular when Bucky and Steve were younger, then things that were sent to soldiers on the front lines “to improve morale”, including the old Captain America comic books, which amused some deep part of the Soldier.  He had a feeling that part of him was what was left of Bucky Barnes.

_“You’re keeping the outfit, right?”_

“What was that?” Karen asked.

“Huh?”

“You said something, but I didn’t quite catch it.”

“I think I said ‘you’re keeping the outfit, right?’.  I was remembering something.  There was a bar and a poster of a guy in that same outfit with the boots and everything, and I asked somebody that.”

“Hey that’s something!  You’re getting your memories back.”

“Even if I get everything back, I’m not going to be the guy the Captain wants; you do realize that, right?  Bucky Barnes died in 1945.  I’m not him.”

“Just because that part of your life is over doesn’t mean that you aren’t him.  Keren Connolly died when I was ten, and Kare-bear replaced her, and then I became Karen McCann, and then Karen Rogers.  But all those other ‘me’s are still a big part of who I am.  Keren’s why I have issues with authority, and Kare-Bear is why I give money to buskers and panhandlers, and Karen McCann is why I work at a children’s theater charity, and all of them are as valid as Karen Rogers.  Bucky didn’t die, he changed, into the Winter Soldier, and then into you.”

“So, I’m Bucky, and I’m the Winter Soldier, and I’m me.  But what if the me I am now isn’t…what if I can’t…”

“Are you worried for you or for Steve, because if you’re stressing over how Steve feels, I’m gonna need you to snap out of it.  Steve’s just over the moon you’re alive.”

“Maybe.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

After lunch, Karen did a load of laundry, getting Bucky’s things clean, and Bucky stripped and remade the bed he’d slept in and almost destroyed the sheets of.  Karen packed the clean clothes in a duffel bag along with an extra shirt and three pairs of socks.  She also tucked in a burn phone and a sticky note with her number.

“Come back anytime.  Call whenever you need to.”

“The Captain is going to try to track me down if he knows I’m nearby.”

“Let me handle Steve.”

“Do you have a mission for me, Handler?”

She’d thought about it, about what Clint and Natasha had mentioned in passing, dredging her memories.  “Your mission is to gather intel on a mark.  That mark is you.  Discover your favorite foods, or your favorite type of music.  There’s an envelope in the bag with some cash.  Report back in a week with two new things you know about yourself.”

“That is…a very interesting mission.”

The phone rang.

“Go, that’s Steve calling to tell me he’s landed.”

The man who used to be Bucky smiled the first genuine smile she’d seen on his face and left without a word.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Steve and Clint returned tired and covered in soot.  They dropped their bags by the front door, Clint yelled “dibs on the shower!” and sprinted to the bathroom while Karen embraced Steve and kissed him.  She let herself melt into his arms for a minute before backing off.

“Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah, actually.  Clint’s good back-up.  I brought you a present.”

“If you hand me the decapitated head of a Hydra agent I _will_ scream.”

“What if I hand you a picture of Bucky entering Morocco two weeks ago?  He’s close, Karen.”

“I know,” she said.  “Let’s sit down, there’s something you need to know.”

They sat at the kitchen table and Karen reached over to hold Steve’s hand.  As much as she said to Bucky that Steve would be happy even if they couldn’t come face to face yet, she wasn’t sure what his response would be to her for encouraging Bucky to go.

“Bucky came to see me,” Karen stated bluntly, getting it over with as fast as possible.

“What?”  He gripped her hand tighter.  “Karen, why didn’t you call me?  I would have come home.”

“He followed you home from the Libya mission, I think.  He waited just so that he could talk to me alone.  He thinks I’m your handler and he wanted to see if I’d be his handler too.  He’s in a rough place, Honey.  He had three episodes of odd behavior; a panic attack, this weird lifeless thing, and something that looked like your night terrors.  He’s not ready to add you to the mix.”

“What d’ya mean?  He’s my best friend.  I’d do whatever it took to help him.”

“Then you need to let him make this choice.  He’s not ready, he said so himself.  You have memories of him, ergo you have expectations.  I don’t.  I gave him a mission to learn about himself, and a duffel bag with extra clothes and money and a burn phone with my number.  He’s going to come back in a week and I’ll ask him if he’s ready to meet you.  We’re respecting his wishes either way.”

“Karen!  How could you…do that, just send him away?  He shouldn’t be on his own, he needs our help.”  He stood up.  “I’ve got to go find him, he can’t have gone far.”

Karen grabbed his arm and pulled, putting her weight into it, to get him back in his seat.  While Steve could easily have lifted her, the tugging did its job as she started to respond verbally.

“He’s been on his own for _three months_ , and he said he _wasn’t ready_ and I wasn’t going to call you and say ‘don’t come home, I’m keeping your not-so-dead best friend and you can sleep at a motel’.  When he’s ready to get help, we’ll throw every available moment of time and effort into helping him get better.  He’s not there yet, though.  He needs us to respect the boundaries he’s set, because he sure as shit ain’t going to enforce them if I pull out my “handler voice”.”  She realized her voice had gotten loud.  Calming herself, she continued.  “I’m doing the best that I can, Steve.  We need to get Sam back here, he has training from the VA, although maybe not even that will cut it.  We need Nat.  She knows what was done to him by the Soviets at least, she knows who he was then, maybe she can help.” 

“What?  What do you mean she knows who he was?”

“He trained her.  In the Red Room, from age seventeen to age twenty.  They took him away from her when they found out she had developed an attachment to him.  Thought it would be detrimental to her development if she learned to rely on anyone.”

“She said she didn’t know him.  Talked about being shot by him and made no mention of knowing him.”

“The pain you’re going through now, Nat went through then.  She doesn’t like showing her wounds, you know that.  Getting her to talk about him in the context of helping him, that’s problematic, but possible, but getting her to talk about him when she didn’t know you knew a version of him too?  Imposible.”

“So.”  Steve took a deep breath.  “I’ll call Sam and see if he’s willing to come back out here.  Nat’s in the wind, I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”

“I was thinking we ask Clint.”

“Ask Clint what?”  The archer walked through the door of the kitchen, fiddling with the drawstring of his pants.

“Can you get a message to Natasha that we know where Bucky is, but he’s messed up and might do better with her help.”

“WHAT!”  His hands jerked, snapping the drawstring.  “Aww, pants.”  He looked back up at them.  “But seriously, you want me to burn a contact with Nat to tell her that her ex, who messed her up pretty bad, needs her to drop everything and come straighten out his brainpan?  The guy tried to kill her!  He shot her!”

“And if I recall the story correctly, you shot at her too.”  Karen paused thoughtfully, “and crashed a Helicarrier. Was what you did under Loki’s control too terribly different from what Bucky did under Hydra’s?”

“Shit.  No, it wasn’t.  I’ll get in touch with Nat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> Teaser Warning!  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> For a moment, both Natalia, black-hearted bitch whose name was whispered in the circles that knew it, and Natalie, bar owner and occasional anonymous tipster for the FBI were gone and the raw, undecided self that she had hardly ever exposed to the world was all she had.


	15. Contacts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to naruturd for commenting. Comments are life.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, poll is still going on over on tumblr for who Bucky ends up with!

In a darkened alley, Natalie Rhodes was explaining to an overweight drunkard that mob connections or no, he was under no circumstance allowed to try anything underhanded with girls at her bar.  She knew how to spot a roofie and his delivery technique wasn’t nearly as smooth as he thought it was.  She neglected to tell him she also knew the mobster whose name he used as a shield (albeit in a different guise) and Karpov would probably take her side.  Karpov was surprisingly feminist for the Boston head of the Russian mob.

She got a sobbing promise never to try drugging someone again, thought a moment and decided he didn’t need both arms functional.  He was too drunk to drive anyway.  With a twist and a pop, she dislocated his right arm at the shoulder.

Leaving the drunkard in the alley, she dusted off her hands and went back inside.  Ilsa, her blonde, laconic bartender gave her a curt nod and pointed to a delivery box on the bar top.  *International shipping.  That’s not a good sign.* 

Natalie took the box up the open metal staircase to her office, pulled shut the blinds and opened the box.  Inside was a bottle of veeerrry good vodka, the kind you can only get outside of Russia if you have certain connections and can bribe customs officials.  It was wrapped carefully in bubble wrap and padded with packing peanuts.  The back label had been scratched, so certain letters were removed.  With a little de-coding, she got the message.

_N-_

_WS come in from cold.  K requests help._

_-C_

So, they had found Yasha.  Or Yasha had found them, based on the phrasing.  He’d need help, he had even more years of brainwashing and layers of memories than even she had.  She could give him the help he needed.  But the pain still lingered, the pain of seeing her first love’s eyes empty and cold.  She could put him back together, but then who would put her together again?  A snippet of thought ran through her head, *I am my own person, and I will not set fire to myself to keep you warm.*  But it wasn’t Yasha asking, it was Karen.  She’d been a bridesmaid at Karen’s wedding, she was a good friend of both the Rogers’, and she knew even if putting together the shattered pieces of Yasha’s mind cut her to ribbons, Karen would help her mend the injury.

Natalie Rhodes was slipped off, like a snake shedding its skin, and Natalia Romanova was put on in her place, like a familiar pair of jeans that was worn in all the right places.  Natalia pulled out a burn phone and dialed a communication and tech specialist she used on her off-the-books jobs. 

“Da, this is Boris,” came the reply in deeply accented English.

“Boris, you old scammer.  How goes business?” Natalia asked in Russian.

“Natalia!  Business is good, very good,” Boris said in his native tongue, “but it could always be better, and you bring me the most delightful toys to work on.”

“I need two copies of that video chatroom encryption code you’ve been working on.  I can pay top dollar, if you can get them to two different dead-drops within the week.”

“The code hasn’t been tested yet,” Boris chided.  “You know that Natalia.”

“Then I guess I’m throwing in free beta testing in addition to the money,” Natalia quipped.  “I need that program, Boris.  I’m not willing to have anything less than the newest and best, and that means you.  So you help an old friend out, make some money and test a new product, or I take my friendship and my money to Iakov.  You know I don’t want to do that.”

“Alright, alright,” Boris said quickly and soothingly.  “No need to get feisty, Natalia.  Two copies, by the end of the week.  Where should I send them?”

“The dead drop in Athens, Greece and the one in Boston, USA.  When I get the program I’ll wire you the money.  The usual plus twenty percent?”

“Da.  Good to do business with you Natalia.”

Natalia hung up, removed the sim card, snapped it in half and threw one half out the window and the other through the shredder over the office’s trashcan.  She reached for Natalie Rhodes again, but putting on a new identity wasn’t as easy as an old one.  For a moment, both Natalia, black-hearted bitch whose name was whispered in the circles that knew it, and Natalie, bar owner and occasional anonymous tipster for the FBI were gone and the raw, undecided self that she had hardly ever exposed to the world was all she had.  She wept, feeling the pain of losing Yasha all over again.  When she was done crying, she shifted and was once again Natalie Rhodes.  The drives that would let her talk to Karen safely weren’t going to come any faster if she shut down the bar, and Ilsa needed the paycheck to pay for her daughter’s medical bills.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Clint Barton waited patiently for two days after he sent the vodka bottle.  Then he received an anonymous email informing him of the dead drop in Athens.  Eager to let the Rogers get over certain issues in their relationship (Make-up sex just wasn’t possible in a house that small with a guest unless you had fewer modesty issues than either Steve or Karen), he left immediately and within a few days a guy in a pizza delivery outfit left a personal-size pizza box under the third Cyprus tree from the door of the local library.  Clint waited a few minutes before retrieving the box.  Personally, given that the laptops all the Avengers owned were StarkTech and practically unhackable, he felt getting a secondary encryption program was excessive, but then, Nat’s motto has always been “anything worth doing is worth doing all the way”.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Karen plugged the drive into her laptop, pulled up the drive data, activated the chat program and waited for Natasha to sign in.  There had been a note confirming time, but Karen was anxious and logged in early.

**N: You there?** **:)**

Karen almost fumbled, resulting in a keysmash, but pulled through at the last minute.

**K: I’m here.  He’s going to come back tomorrow, and he says I’m his handler.  WTF do I do?**

**N: They conditioned him to need someone giving him instructions.  Easing off of that is possible, but rough. :(** **Until Sam gets there, give him simple, easy to follow instructions.  Try not to order him to do something he really doesn’t want.**

**K: I can do that.  Before he left I told him to find out things about himself, as a mission.**

**N: You’re a natural.**

**K: He had this weird thing happen when I had to help him shave, he went all lifeless in the eyes.**

**N: They must have conditioned him to go into a submissive state when being shaved.  It’s after my time with him, but I’d bet it was to make wiping him easier.  He’ll be very suggestable in that state, so tread carefully.**

**K: Will do.  Can you come in person?  Or meet us in NY when we can convince him to come home with us?**

**N: Maybe.  Still figuring out some things, might not be the best help.  Time is running out on my end, same time next week?**

**K: Yeah.  Thanks for the help.**

**N: Sure thing. ;)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
>  
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “You aren’t upset? I used money you gave me to buy something with no conceivable value to my ability as an asset. I got it just because I wanted it.”


	16. Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cap and Clint meet new and improved not-Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the darling naruturd.
> 
> And for those of you who don't read the comments, the poll mentioned is a collection of who you want Bucky to end up with. I will write any combination of Nat, Clint, and Darcy with Bucky. So what do you ship?

The Soldier returned to watch the little house the day he was to report back.  His handler hadn’t been specific about time, so he sat and waited.  The Captain and another man went out for a run, which was probably his cue.

Karen was waiting for him, but she still didn’t hear him enter.  She handed him a cup of hot tea and gestured for them to sit at the table.

“So, what have you learned?”

“The target likes spicy food, especially if they include garlic, and beef dishes.  He…I, also like sweet things, but it often comes in a cold format, which I dislike.”

“Not surprising, but this is progress.  I’ll make beef stroganoff for tonight’s dinner, and at home I have a recipe for Shrimp Fra Daivolo we can try later,” Karen said, “and I can teach you to bake, so you can have sweet foods that aren’t ice cream or otherwise cold.  Anything else?”

“The tar- _I_ like music that…bounces.  I don’t know what it’s called, but it sounds like something you should dance to.  They were playing it in a restaurant I ate at.  My foot tapped.  My foot tapped  on its own, I didn’t think about it, I just did it.  I feel like I might know how to dance.  Why would I know that?  It isn’t mission relevant.”

“The process used to wipe your memories carefully avoided the muscle memory portions of your brain, to preserve your fighting skills.  Dancing is also a muscle memory thing, and you, when you were fully Bucky Barnes, enjoyed dancing.”

“Alright.”  The Soldier let that process.  After a moment’s pause he asked, “Did he like machines and how things worked?  The science of it, I mean.”

“Yes.  Do you?”

“I think so.  I found a book in the bookshop that explained how various things work.  I think it was for children, but it was interesting.”  He hesitated, as though he was about to reveal a secret that might get him in trouble.  “I bought it.”

“That’s good, you found a thing you liked and you bought it for yourself, that’s great progress!”

“You aren’t upset?  I used money you gave me to buy something with no conceivable value to my ability as an asset.  I got it just because I wanted it.”

*Oh, dear, we have some unlearning to do.  How do I explain…* Karen thought, gave consideration to how to phrase it then explained.

“Up til now, your use as an asset has been like a weapon.  Your shitty handlers wanted you numb and unthinking of anything beyond the mission, so that they could point you at a target and have the target dead.  They wanted a gun.  I want something completely different.  I respect your years of experience, even if you don’t have all of them back yet.  I want you to be able to think and feel and decide things on your own.  I want a human being, not a weapon.  I am _beyond_ thrilled that you have interests outside of missions.”

“So…you _want_ me to have non-mission-relevant things?”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t because it was something that might interest…him, is it?” he asked warily.  “I’m not him.”

“I think you’re more him than you think, but no, I’m not encouraging this because Bucky might have liked it.  I’m encouraging it because you like it.  By the way, if there’s Bucky, and the Winter Soldier, and you, what do we call you?”

“Soldi- no, that doesn’t fit anymore.  Everything is shifting.  I’m not the Soldier anymore.”

“It’s up to you.  I don’t want to give you a name you don’t like.  I could suggest some though, if you want.”

“Yes, yes please.”

“Well, I assume Bucky is out, what about James?”

“Maybe, it’s not quite right.”

“Barnes?”

“I don’t know.  It’s a last name.   It’s tying me to people I don’t remember.”

“Buchannan?”

“NO.”

“Sarge?”

“Definitely not.  I think we should stick with James.”

“OK James.  Have you showered since the last time you were here?”

He shook his head a little shamefaced.  “I don’t feel safe taking my weapons off unless my handler is nearby.”

“Well, I’m not going to let anything happen, so go ahead and shower.  Steve is going to be back in about an hour, but if you aren’t ready to see him I’ll stash him in the bedroom while you’re here.”

“I…think I might be ready, as long as he knows I’m not fully Bucky.”

“He knows, and I’ll make sure he respects it.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In one of the hidden Hydra bases, one that had escaped both the Winter Soldier and Captain America, an alert flashed on the screen of a minion assigned to watch the feeds.  The minion alerted his masters to the fact that the Winter Soldier was sighted stashing his weapons in an alley before entering a house via a window.  Further analysis showed Captain Rogers and an unidentified male leaving the house moments before.  Plans were made, and a team assembled and deployed.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Soldier, now James, took his shower quickly this time, knowing his handler’s other asset was due back in an hour.  He was in and out of the bathroom in half an hour, according to the clock in the kitchen.  He didn’t even have a hard time shaving, except for a small cut on his jaw.  The part of his brain that was the remnant of Bucky Barnes had memories of straight blades that would have made the cut on his jaw a major problem, and a voice in the back of his head was quietly repeating the refrain of amazement he had felt when he read the book he’d bought.

James tried to stay relaxed, even with the knowledge that the Captain would be returning soon.  It he could respect that James _wasn’t_ Bucky, or at least not completely the Bucky the Captain remembered, then they might get along.  If he couldn’t, if they didn’t, then what?

His handler fussed in the kitchen, slicing thin strips of meat and stirring a pot of simmering cream-colored sauce.  If she chose the Captain, then he would need to find another handler.  She had more experience with the Captain, she might choose him out of familiarity.  She also had seen him under the effects of his less stable moments.  He should show her she could trust him.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Stir that gently, but continually.  The sauce will stick to the bottom of the pan if you don’t.  And taste it, tell me what you think of the garlic amount.  Too much?”

He dutifully took over stirring, and accepted the clean spoon to taste the creamy sauce.  A bright explosion of garlic and black pepper complemented the savory base.

“Just right.”

He was still stirring (although now that the pan seared beef and drippings were added to the sauce, it wouldn’t be much longer) when the Captain returned from his run.  James watched in fascinated horror as the Captain bent to kiss their handler.  Surely this was not right?  A handler and an asset…god, what if she expected that of him?  He didn’t feel any desire to kiss his handler!  She wouldn’t force it, would she?

“Steve, Clint, come meet James.”  He had been so focused on the Captain and that inexplicable kiss he had missed the other man.  The second man came forward and shook his hand.

“Clint Barton, or Hawkeye, or whatever.  I gotta go shower.  I should have known better than to run with Captain Endurance.  Nice meeting you,” he said over his shoulder as he limped away.

While this was happening a  hissed conversation was happening by the door where Karen had stopped Steve.

“Karen, I already know…”

“You know a part of his past, and he’s not defined by that part any more than he is by the Winter Soldier.  You will respect that, Steven Grant Rogers or so help me….  Now come say hello.”  She maneuvered him over to the stove, where James was still stirring. “James, this is my husband Steve.” Was it his imagination or did she stress the word husband?  Were they undercover?  That could explain the kiss.

The Captain squared his broad shoulders and stuck out a hand.  “Steve Rogers, nice to meet you.”  James took the hand a received a confident handshake.

“James.  Just James.”

Karen let the two men look at each other for a moment before gently prodding James in the side with a finger.  “Is it ready?”

“Is what…oh shit!” James turned back to the stove and hastily turned off the heat under the beef-and-sauce combo.  “It should be ready, the beef was flaking when the Capt- when Steve came in.  What next?”

“Next we serve and eat.  Let me get the dishes…”

“Karen, let me, you go sit,” said Steve with a gentle push towards the table.  “You cooked, I can at least set the table.”

_“Bucky, I can do it.  I’m not so sick that I’m of no use. You cooked, I can at least set the table.”_

_“Stevie, you were burning with fever not an hour ago, your joints have all gone swollen and you can barely stand.  See, right now, you have to hold on to the chair just to have this fight with me.”_

_“No I don’t,” Steve protested, releasing the rail-back chair and promptly wobbling and pitching forward, into his arms.  Steve was hot, so very hot._

_“I got you Stevie, I got you.”_

“You okay, Buc-I mean James?”

“Yeah.  I’m fine.  Why do you ask?”

“You didn’t seem to be seeing the kitchen or us is all.”

“If he says he’s fine then he’s fine,” Karen interrupted.  “Steve, we’re out of ice, can you get some from the freezer in the garage?”

Steve left, and his handler touched his arm.  “It was another flashback, wasn’t it?” he gave a non-committal grunt.  “Good or bad?”

“Bad, but not war-bad, just…I hate seeing that even when I was _him_ my life revolved around doing what was best for someone else.  I’ve always been the Asset, I just didn’t know it.”

“We’ll find you something that’s best for you.  Now, food.”

Steve returned with a bowl of ice that he placed in the freezer, Clint came out of the back in clean sweats and a different pair of boots and they sat down to eat.  Then all hell broke loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love me a cliffhanger! *runs from angry mob*
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “We” kick “were” kick “eating” kick “DINNER!” She shook him by the arm, his body weight pulling at the joints. “Do you even know how rude that is? Wait until we’re done, dammit!”


	17. Danger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Badguys!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note, the poll is still up and will be until I post the next chapter, because that's when I have to start adding in foreshadowing and such as unto the end result.

Six men in tactical gear stormed the house, two through the kitchen window James used, two through the door and two apparently came through the back door, as they emerged from the hallway to block their targets.  There were only seconds to react to the invasion.

Clint immediately stood between Karen and the men and produced a large, scary looking knife from out of nowhere.  Steve grabbed the small gun from the leg holster Karen made him wear when he went out, and James darted to the kitchen counter and snagged the knife-block in his left hand.

Clint threw the knife in his hand with deadly accuracy, striking an assailant in the eye with enough force the man struck the wall behind him.  The tiny gun in Steve’s hand took out three assailants, but jammed when he tried to fire on the fourth.  James yanked a knife from the block and threw it, mimicking Clint, but his aim wasn’t as good, and he only winged the man on the arm before being tackled to the ground and a Taser-like thing pressed to his side.  His left arm straightened and locked as his body quaked with seizures.  The knife block fell to the side as the Hydra goon locked a metallic collar around James’s neck.  Steve leapt to defend his friend, and the last attacker used the recently vacated gap to get around Clint.

The goon who attacked James turned his electric weapon on Steve.  The waves of cascading pain dropped him to his knees.

Clint was torn between turning to help Karen and moving forward to help Steve when he heard a squeaky yelp of pain and Karen’s voice.  “You come into my house, when I’m having dinner, and you try to take away my friend?  No.  Just no.”

Assuming that meant Karen was fine, Clint retrieved his KA-BAR knife from the body of his victim, he turned to take out the man strapping a collar on Steve.  A quick slice with his knife and the man went down grasping at his throat.  Steve shook off the pain and wiped blood from his face, and turned to unclasp the collar on James’ neck, with Clint’s help.

When the three men looked to see what was going on over by the table, Clint started giggling.  Karen had flipped the man face down and was holding him there by his arm, and was repeatedly kicking him in the nuts.

“We” kick “were” kick “eating” kick “DINNER!”  She shook him by the arm, his body weight pulling at the joints. “Do you even know how rude that is?  Wait until we’re done, dammit!”

“Karen,” Steve said soothingly.  “Honey, please let the guy go, we need to interrogate him.  We could be in danger, still”

“My _evening_ is in danger,” Karen quipped.  Steve and James gave her a blank look, while Clint laughed.  “OK, The Incredibles is going on the list, make a note.”  Dutifully, Steve pulled out a little notebook and wrote in it.  Karen released her grip on the man’s arm and allowed him to curl into the fetal position.  “You can take him; I’m done venting for now.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

After interrogating the man Karen had captured (which involved tying him to a chair and Clint cleaning his knife while Steve asked questions in a firm, almost disappointed, voice), there was a brief discussion of what to do about the bodies.  Finally Steve just called in to the office of that pompous General who was always on the American news to let him know that five dead (and one injured yet still alive) Hydra agents were at Captain America’s rented vacation home.  James stayed out of it, mostly, instead watching his handler.

She had been full of fire and rage when she was kicking the man she’d pinned, but once he was out of her hands she deflated.  Her hands shook, with something other than rage, and her shoulders slumped slightly as she leaned on the wall while they interrogated him.  The stroganoff was cold by the time they were done, which for some reason caused Karen to cry.  The Captain wrapped her in his arms and stroked her hair. 

James thought about the kiss again.  By the calm and casual way the Captain held her when she began to cry, the relationship was very different from any handler/asset relationship he knew of.  Assets did not comfort handlers; they obeyed them, but never admitted to seeing weakness.

_“Assets know their place.”_   It was one phrase but many voices colliding in his head, some in English, some in German, and some in Russian.  One of the Russian voices sounded a lot like him, and it scared him a little. 

Instead of dwelling on the scary things lurking in his brain, he turned his thoughts to analyzing the things about his handler and the Captain that didn’t add up.  He thought of the way his handler had stressed the word ‘husband’.  Maybe he had misjudged the relationship.

_“So what kinda dame you want, Cap?” asked a dark skinned man in a uniform as a group sat around a fire._

_“I dunno, Gabe.  Spent too long thinkin’ I’d never get one.”_

_“I can make a guess, fellas,” the voice was light hearted and teasing.  “Cap here wants a spit-fire with nerves of steel…dark hair an’ pale skin…maybe named Peggy…”_

_“Shaddup, Buck.”_

The pieces clicked back together, Karen was exactly the kind of woman that the Capt- that _Steve_ would go for.  She meant it when she said they were married.  This was interesting.   Their handler was really just his handler, unless she was also a handler for Clint.  Although judging from the way the blond packed up their personal items in preparation for leaving, Clint wasn’t conditioned to need a handler like James was.  (Steve had been against calling the General, for fear he’d take James, but now they were just going to have to leave before he got there.)  Karen stopped crying enough to direct the packing of the piles if paper that supposedly held vital information on the Hydra network, which James did with careful, diligent obedience.  Steve, ever paranoid, took a cloth to anything James had touched with his right hand.

Eventually, they were packed up and ready to go, and the obvious problem of getting a notorious assassin with a metal arm through airport security suddenly dawned on everyone.  James surprised everyone by shrugging it off.

“The airport in Athens is very outdated.  They only have metal detectors that detect ferrous magnetic metals.  My arm isn’t.  It’s mostly titanium.  If I wear long sleeves and gloves it shouldn’t be noticed.  Also, I spent most of my time as an assassin very carefully avoiding getting in any systems, including the ones connected to the info dump during the Triskellion battle.  I checked; there’s no way to ID me.  How do you think I got to Africa in the first place?”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

There was a spot of trouble getting to Athens, but nothing an arrow to the front tire of the Hum-Vee trying to run them off the road couldn’t fix, although it made Clint unbearably smug.  The trip through the airport went about as quickly as international flights ever do, and soon they were back in New York.

“Where to, guys?” asked Clint, “Tower or your place?  I’m cool with either.”

“Tower, it’ll be safer,” answered Steve.  “Plus Tony’s been bugging us to move back ever since we moved out.”

“To be fair,” said Karen, “we moved out because he was renovating to make an entire floor just for each Avenger and it was annoying living in a construction zone.  It’s over now though, so I see no problem moving back in.”

They called ahead to make sure Tony was prepared and by the time they reached the tower, everything was in place for James to be allowed onto Steve and Karen’s floor and everybody fell into bed, dead tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> I don't think I did anything too terrible, but as always, Fluff World prompts are open.
> 
> Teaser  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> "Oh God have mercy, I killed them, I killed them…."


	18. Adjustments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James wakes up in the tower for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to naruturd for commenting. ILY darling!
> 
> Also thank you to everyone who participated in the poll. It is now closed, and the results were neck and neck between Clint and Darcy, so I OT3'd. I'm confident I can write a decent poly relationship, having great personal contact with a number of poly families, but if that makes you want to nope out of the fic, I'm sorry and I understand.
> 
> Chapter specific warning, I detail the Winter Soldier's view of the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark. Also, I'm sorry to anybody who likes Howard and Maria, but this is not an Elder Starks appreciation fic.

The Asset woke, no wait, he wasn’t the Asset.  And he was in a soft warm bed, not being pulled roughly from a cryo-tube.  Suddenly the memories of going to his handler and everything that had happened after rushed back to him.  He was in the Avengers home, surrounded by superheroes.  What in the ever loving anything was he doing surrounded by superheroes in their sky-scraper built by a billionaire?

“Sergeant Barnes,” came a prim British voice, “your breathing has passed the ordinary parameters of pace and shallowness.  Should I summon a physician or a therapist?”

“Who the fuck said that?  Where are you?”  James was on high alert, looking for the intruder.

“I am Jarvis, Mr. Stark’s personal AI program, I handle any needs related to the tower, among other functions, such as guiding visitors new to the tower.  In many ways, I _am_ the tower, and may be accessed from any of the residential floors.  May I do anything to assist you?”

“You can never call me Sergeant Barnes again, for starters.”  His head hurt just thinking of that name, that title.  “My name is James.”

“My apologies, I’m not programmed to use first names.  I can only use last names, titles and honorifics.  Sir wished me to sound like a man who worked for his father.”  A vague memory of a Brit that sometimes hovered around a short, dark haired man with a moustache flitted through his brain.  He chased it for a second, but it was gone, and the problem remained.

“Titles, huh?  What if I made James my title?  An acronym, for Just A Messed-up Experimental Soldier.”

“That is impressive working of a loophole in my programming, James.  May I be of further assistance?”

“Where is my handler?” He paused, trying to remember if she’d ever given her name to him.  If she had, he couldn’t recall it.  There was a conversation about past selves, but nothing that had stuck beyond the message.  Handlers didn’t usually like being called by name, so he hadn’t bothered memorizing the list.   But if his guess about her relationship to the Captain was correct… “Mrs. Rogers.  Where is she?”

“Captain and Mrs. Rogers are currently in their bedroom, with the privacy protocol activated.  When an appropriate moment comes up I can alert Mrs. Rogers to your desire to speak with her.  In the meantime, might I suggest bathing?  You will find facilities for such activity through the door to the left of the armoire.”  Bucky didn’t feel like showering, but he might as well see what a billionaire superhero thought were acceptable accommodations for a broken super soldier. 

Whatever he had expected, the massive marble-tiled shrine to bathing wasn’t it.  Heat came from the marble floor, which by rights should be cold.  There was a shower stall large enough for three people with room left over, and a tub that looked like he could take laps in it.  Two sinks (two!) and ample counter space lined one wall, which also had windows, but James could tell from the color of the glass (and the fact that even a Stark couldn’t assume all his guests were exhibitionists) that it was polarized to the outside.  They still let in plenty of light, which James found he enjoyed.

To be thorough in his analysis of his new surroundings, he poked around in the storage areas, finding not only towels, but hairbrushes, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, various types of razors and shaving creams, toothpastes and toothbrushes, and a large glass container of grainy spheres that smelled good but had no immediately apparent purpose.  Even though he still didn’t feel like showering (or using that comically large tub), he did need to shave, as he scratched the stubble on his chin.  Selecting a razor was an adventure on its own, as there was a variety.  Then came the discovery that there were no mirrors.  As it turned out, there were switches that turned the glass windowpanes to mirrors.  After shaving he brushed his hair and his teeth, and went back out into the bedroom.  His bag wasn’t there.  He investigated the other door and found a gigantic closet stocked with clothes.  He searched through it for something that might fit, settled on a pair of deep blue sweatpants and a white long sleeved shirt like the one his handler had lent him.

“Jarvis?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yes, James?”

“Are the Captain and my handler still…occupied?”

“Yes.  I can summon another of the Avengers if you would like.”

“Clint Barton, is he available?”

“Yes, I believe he can be pulled away from his current activity.” The voice sounded like Jarvis disapproved, which made him seem even more human than the seamless British accent.  “Mr. Barton has indicated that he would be amenable to showing you around the Tower, but I’m afraid he wishes you to come to him.  He seems to be rather...involved in what he is doing.  If you pick up the Stark Pad on the right-hand bedside table, I can interface with it to give you directions.”

James picked up the flat glass-and-metal tablet from the table and it lit up a green arrow pointed towards the door to the bedroom.  Following the arrow led him through a long hallway and out into a spacious room with sofas and another wall of windows.  To one side of the cavernous space, was an open elevator.  James followed the arrow into the elevator and the doors slid shut and the number 89 appeared in lights over the panel of buttons.  Several seconds of his stomach feeling like it was going to fall through the floor later, the doors opened and James peeked out into a large white room filled with vaguely science-y looking things.  All seemed quiet, until a clacking sound rent the air and a flurry of orange and blue projectiles sped through the air.  James immediately hit the back of the elevator and felt for a knife, a gun, anything to defend himself with.

“If you all would pardon the intrusion, James is here and your current leisure activity seems to be disturbing him.”

“Oh, shit,” came Clint’s voice from behind a rank of computers.  “Jarvis, you could have warned us!”

“I attempted to, Agent Barton.  Your exact words were, and I quote, “send him down, Team Science is winning and we need reinforcements.”  The words were repeated from a voice recording, of Clint, with the clacking sound in the background.

“Sorry buddy.  Cease fire guys, we have a vet on the floor!” Clint cried.

James cautiously poked his head out of the elevator and when he saw Clint he crossed to the middle of the room.  A short dark-haired man sauntered up to him and stuck out a hand.

“Sergeant Barnes, pleasure to meet you, I am, of course, Tony Stark.”

_The car comes to a screeching halt.  “Barnes?” says a man with dark hair and a moustache.  This was not how it was meant to go, he was meant to crash trying to avoid the asset standing on the icy, winding road.  “Sergeant Barnes?” says the man again.  “Is it really you?”_

_“No.”  He fired two bullets before pushing the car over the edge of the road and down a cliff._

“Hey, how you doing there?”  Clint gently touched his shoulder.  “Jesus, Tony, he looks like he’s seen a ghost!  What the fuck did you do?”

“Maybe he’s seen Tony’s sex-tape, that’d be scarring enough,” quipped a brunette wielding a bright orange plastic gun.

“Ho-Howard?” James managed, with difficulty, to say.

Now it was Tony’s turn to blanch.  “What the fuck did you call me?”

“Not you, you’re not…Howard was in a car,” James wrapped his arms around his body as he shook “the car…I was supposed to crash the car, but he recognized me.  Oh God have mercy, I killed them, I killed them….”  James began to sob.

“Flashback,” Clint told the others knowledgably.  “Used to get them all the time when I was first dealing with the fallout from Loki.  Dr. Foster, if you could get him a chair…”

James was gently guided to a chair, and an arm was placed around his shoulder and someone was telling him to let it out and somehow he wound up with his arms around the pretty brunette with the plastic gun as she patted his back.  When he finally felt the end of the crying was near, he looked up at her and tried to apologize for getting her sweater all wet.

“No, really, this is nothing,” she said, waving away his concern.  “You should see what Jane puts my wardrobe through.”

“Hey!  That’s a dirty lie Darcy Lewis!” protested a petite, brown-haired woman.

“Sorry, Boss-Lady, but what with the coffee yesterday, and the machine oil in London, and the Slurpee in New Mexico, and the-”

“So I’m a little clumsy.  And how do you even remember the Slurpee?”

“Favorite band tee, ruined by toxic neon blue.  How could I forget?”

The two women chattered at each other, slinging good-natured ribbing and references to things only they knew about as easily as…as….  James reached for the memory just under the surface, he knew it was there, bodies around a campfire, men in uniforms, singing in a bar, the memories were fractured and pieces were missing, but they were at least happy, unlike his memories of shooting Howard Stark and his wife.  He supposed he ought to apologize to Tony, but how do you do that?  Finally he settled on looking the man in the eye and getting it out.

“I’m sorry I killed your parents.”

“You killed my bio-donors, but I’d hardly call them parents.  Maria tried, but with Howard the way he was, with the drinking and the regrets and the guilt-tripping and when he got mad….  If I had a parent it wasn’t them.  I kinda wish you’d held off until later so that Obie…so that Stane never got his hands on any control of the company, but you weren’t exactly in the pilot’s chair then, were you?”

“Not really.”

“Let me know if you need anything, but now I think Legolas was going to show you how the Tower works.  Speaking of work, Dr.’s Banner, Foster, and Stark need to get back to their projects.  So shoo, non-doctorates.”

“Me too, Iron Ass?” asked Darcy.

“Especially you, Lewis.  Scram, the lot of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com 
> 
> As always, Fluff World prompts are open. 
> 
> Teaser  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “Never tell Tony he has a good sense of humor, or else you will become his favorite person and that is a scary place to be.”


	19. Tours and Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Darcy Show James around the tower and he and Karen have a Heart to Heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To naruturd as always, and I want to take a moment to thank the guests who left kudos. I know the signing up part of AO3 is down right now, but I thank you for giving me that little warm glow.
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter specific warnings: Fallout of brainwashing, severe phobia of medical professionals, mentions of suicide attempts, body horror (sorta)

Clint and Darcy took him to the top of the tower first, where the entire floor had been turned into a massive living space.  A sunken section was ringed with deep, comfortable looking couches, and a glass table sat in the center.  Off to one side was a kitchen, and to the other was a massive screen taking up a wall.  The third wall was entirely glass, from the windows to the doors that opened onto a balcony.

“That’s where Thor or Tony can land, although we also have a quinjet landing zone on the roof,” Clint said, following James’s gaze to the enormous space.

“Or so you can have rockin’ parties, but I haven’t quite convinced Tony of that,” said Darcy.  “He doesn’t want to share the upper floors with anybody but family.”

They showed him where everything in the kitchen was, and then how to operate the state-of-the-art entertainment center on the opposite wall.  When they had shown him everything, Darcy spoke up, “Avengers Tower is 93 stories, and ironically most of it isn’t in use for the Avengers.  Floors 1-50 are office building for Stark Industries.  Floors 51-55 are a gigantic mall.  Biggest in the country, which is totally how Tony rolls.  Kinda wonder why he didn’t make the Tower taller so it’d be the tallest.”

“Pepper talked him out of making his tower bigger than One World Trade Center,” Clint informed Darcy.  “She said it’d be a public relations nightmare.  As it is, it’s only one floor shorter and has more sub-basements.”

“Ah.  So anyways, the giant mall, very big.  Basically Tony didn’t want to ever have to leave the building to shop.  It has EVERYTHING.”  Darcy had a gleam in her eye that was frankly a little frightening, and James was glad when Clint butted in.

“The 56th floor has iterations of some restaurants Tony really likes, plus a few that are unique to the Tower,” the blonde said. “57 is a buffer floor, it houses a security team and not much else.  It’s real purpose is to keep sound from the mall and restaurants reaching 58-62, which are the R and D labs for Stark Industries.  63-65 are also essentially buffer floors, used to store failed prototypes that might someday be the jumping off point for a successful prototype.  66-75 are training levels, workout stuff, simulations, that sort of thing.  There’s a fantastic range on 68.”

“Don’t let him talk about the range for too long or he can’t stop without someone whacking his head." Darcy jabbed her elbow into Clint’s midsection, seemingly in retaliation for his interruption of her earlier.  “76 is Steve’s floor.  He has the lowest floor because he once called Stark Tower “big” and “ugly” and he has 76 in particular because Tony has a fabulous sense of humor.”

“You just like a history of politics joke,” Clint said.  Turning to James with a grave face, he said “Never tell Tony he has a good sense of humor, or else you will become his favorite person and that is a scary place to be.”

James’s head was spinning from all this information.  The tone wasn’t enough like a briefing for him to feel comfortable with mass quantities of information being thrown at him.  Clint must have noticed, because he steered the conversation away from the information dump.

“Do you want something to eat?  You haven’t eaten yet have you?”

“Yes please.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

They went to the 56th floor, and Darcy selected a Middle Eastern café, saving James the trouble of trying to choose from the dozens of restaurants available.

“Have you ever eaten at a Middle Eastern place before?” she asked while Clint was ordering at the counter.

“Maybe?” James replied.  Darcy looked curious, so he continued.  “I don’t know if they told you anything about me, but I have pretty big holes in my memory.  I’m sure I was held by Russians at one point and that they fed me real food for a while, but at some point I was given or sold to Hydra, and from what I recall they weren’t exactly taking me to dinner.  So I might have eaten this kind of thing before, but if I have I don’t remember it.”

“Do you like spicy stuff?”  James was happy the question was something he could answer.

“Yes.  And beef.”

“Wait here a sec.”  Darcy walked over to Clint, the sway of her hips catching James’s eye, until he abruptly turned his gaze down onto the salt and pepper shakers.

“Hey, Hawkdude,” Darcy said, “can you switch Bucky’s order to beef and tell them to ramp up the spices?”

“I thought you liked the guy, Darcy!”

“I do, he said he likes hot stuff and their spice mix is great.  I’m doing him a favor.”

“Fine.  If he cries it’s on you.”

As it turned out, James loved the spicy beef kebab that was ordered for him.  Darcy was happily chowing down on a shawarma sandwich, and Clint had a combo platter in front of him that he picked at.

“What’s wrong, Hawkdude?”

“I forgot to tell them to leave the green stuff off.  It’s really hot and I hate it and it’s right there between the hummus and the baba ghanoush where I might get it if I scoop up any of either.”

“Solvable problem. Gimme a piece of pita.”  He passed her the plate of bread triangles and she stole his plate from him, scooped all of the green relish up onto two pieces of pita and passed the plate back to Clint.  “Want one?” she offered to James.  He took it with gentle fingers and bit off a chunk of bread and relish.  It was good, but not as good as the kebab.

They finished their food and Clint asked him if he wanted to go down to the mall or back up to the Avengers-only floors.

“I think I need to check in with my handler.  It’s been a long time.”

“What?” Darcy asked.

“Wait until we have more privacy,” Clint murmured.  “I can explain.  Tasha did the same thing with me when I first brought her in.  But back to Steve and Karen’s floor it is.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Steve and Karen were, thankfully, done with whatever activities required privacy filters.  (James knew perfectly well what was happening, but he was going to pretend he didn’t.  Nope, not even thinking it.)  Clint pulled Steve and Darcy away with an offer of a chance to see him preform trick shots at the range on 68.

Karen let James slip into the mode she thought of as the Soldier-space, and give a report of what he’d learned.  Some of it was new to her, for instance the mall.  That would be a time saver.  She was glad that James was finding friends, although she wished she could have been there to help with the flashback in the lab.  But realistically, she couldn’t be there for all of his flashbacks, and he’d handled it.  It did bring to mind something she wanted to talk to him about.

“James, have you considered going to a professional for help with managing your flashbacks and other mental issues?  I can help some, but there’s a whole world of things I can’t do.  We could get you a therapist or a psychiatrist or both.”

“No doctors, please, no.  Have I done something wrong?  What did I do, I’ll never do it again, please….”  Karen pulled him into a hug and petted his hair.

“It’s not that, never that, I promise it isn’t a punishment and they won’t do anything without permission from you.  You don’t even have to go if you don’t want.  I’m sorry, I should have thought your experience with doctors must be very different from mine.”

“Don’t apologize,” he gritted out.

“It isn’t ok that I made that mistake, I should…”

“Don’t.  Apologize.  Please.  It isn’t handler behavior, and it makes my head hurt trying to reconcile that you are my handler but you aren’t a handler and just…don’t.”

“Ok.  Filing that away.  But still, no doctor is going to touch you without you asking or being in immediate danger of injury or death.  I promise.”

“You don’t always need to touch someone to hurt them,” James said darkly.  After a pause he asked her “Do you really think it would help?”

“It helped me.”  She paused, thinking.  There was something that might make her point, but it was personal.  Steve had seen it, and Catie obviously, but no-one else in her life right now knew about it.  “Jarvis, can you instigate the privacy protocols for this room?”

“Of course, Mrs. Rogers.  I should inform you, though, that Sir has changed them such that if someone in the room appears to be in danger the protocols will be canceled and emergency measures taken.”

“Thank you Jarvis…out of morbid and masochistic curiosity, what did Tony name the new sub protocol?”

“The Jolly Green protocol.”

“I’m saving that to tell Betty if I ever need to threaten Tony, you know that right?”

“I am aware.  Will that be all, Mrs. Rogers?”

“Yes.”  She turned her attention back to James.  He might not see the damage as something huge, his arm certainly passed her little scar for body horror, but it meant something.  “I want to show you something,” she told the former assassin.  She started unbuttoning her (or technically Steve’s) shirt.  At his look of panic, she gave him a look.  “Relax, it’s not going to be anything like that.  I’m a happily married woman.  I want to show you a scar.”

With the shirt unbuttoned down to her waist, she parted the fabric and revealed a long, jagged scar from her sternum, down her chest and along her right side.  The faint red mark had healed significantly, but it was obvious the cut had been deep and imperfectly done.

“That was from a botched suicide attempt.  I was 13, and just off the streets.  I hated it and I wanted to die.  Makes no sense, right?  Catie found me in our closet passed out from the pain with a knife in my hand.  The McCann’s got me into therapy and then got me a psychiatrist, and I’ve been on meds ever since.  It saved my life, going to doctors and therapists.  It isn’t always a bad thing.”  She buttoned up the shirt again.  “Just give it thought, ok?”

“Yes, Handler.”

“Ok.  Now let’s go find my husband.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: http://bairnsidhe.tumblr.com/  
> There's currently a giveaway going on, and I have like six entries, so come on over!
> 
> Also, if this chapter was disturbing and you need fluff to even you out, Fluff World prompts are going on too. Leave a comment or shoot me a message on tumblr with your idea.
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “So we both want something here, and the big thing that scares guys off of me isn't an issue for you, and I see no problems,”


	20. Trick Shots and Tricky Talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Darcy settle a bet, then a hang-out session turns deeper than planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in a day! Because of the super fast posting, there have been no new comments, but I do want to thank Tamarama and Naruturd for the emotional support I needed these last couple days.
> 
> Also, and this is not a command, as you are not my minions, but if you could hold my family in your thoughts, my Dad has pretty bad liver disease and is getting put on the transplant list (we hope). I could really use the knowledge that folks are sending positive energy his way.

“Hey, Honey,” whispered Steve as he wrapped his hand around Karen’s waist.  “Did you two have a good talk?”

“Yeah, I think we did.  What is Clint doing now?”  Clint was, quite obviously, taking off his boots, but still the question remained, why?

“Darcy saw a video on YouTube of a girl firing a bow with her feet while doing a handstand.  She made a bet with him that he couldn’t do it.”

Clint carefully and awkwardly pinched an arrow and the bowstring between two toes, casually flipped into a handstand with all the ease of a gymnast, and clumsily drew the bow with his feet.  Checking his aim, he adjusted slightly up and released the arrow.  It flew straight and fast, but at an angle that was obviously not going to hit the target.  It did however hit a bulb in a light panel.

“Agent Barton, if you would please refrain from shooting out the bulbs, they are expensive to replace.”

“Stark’s good for it, and I don’t miss that often.”

“Sir may not mind, as he once crash landed the suit into his Malibu residence, taking out a grand piano and a Maserati, but Ms. Potts has asked me to keep Tower maintenance costs to a minimum.  And frankly speaking, Ms. Potts is scarier than Sir.”

“Good point.  I’ll try to keep away from the panels.  Two more shots to hit the target before you buy me pizza, Lewis.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Hawkeye, more like All Talk Guy.”

Clint set up again and aimed down a little.  Then he squinted and adjusted to the left.  He let fly and the arrow flew towards the target, hitting the right edge of the plywood silhouette and flying past, leaving a trail of sawdust and splinters and about a square inch of wood gone from the humanoid shape.

“Doesn’t count,” Darcy said.  “It needs to be a solid shot by the terms of the bet.”

“But you winged him.  No bad for your first time shooting with your feet,” commented James.

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Winter.”  Swiftly and with great ease, Clint loaded three arrows into his toes, flipped into a handstand and fired all three arrows at once, hitting the plywood man’s forehead, heart and crotch.  Everyone stood amazed at the skill as Clint casually flipped into a standing position and took a bow.

“You hustled me!” insisted Darcy.

“No, you hustled yourself.  You badgered a former circus marksman to do the thing he did for a living ten years straight, or technically four, it took six to master it.  What did you expect?”

“Then what were the first two shots?”

“Giving you your money’s worth, everybody loves a little drama.”

James suddenly barked out a burst of laughter.  Everyone turned to look at him.  He sheepishly smiled and said “I just remembered something.”

“Was it good?” asked Karen.

“Yeah, yeah it was.”  James looked at Steve.  “Don’t get your hopes up, but I remembered a contest with the Howling Commandos where Peggy did a hundred and seven one armed push-ups.  All the guys were passed out and whimpering and there she was continuing to do it until you stopped her cause it was damaging morale.”

“That’s great, Buc-sorry,” Steve course corrected, “James, that’s real good.  I’ll tell Peggy next time I visit her that you remembered that.”

“She’s alive?  I remember being sent to kill her, to open up a spot in S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“She’s fine.  I can ask if she remembers what happened, but her memory is…not good.”

“Peggy has Alzheimer’s,” Karen said gently.  “It’s hard to remember sometimes, but a lot of the people you knew are really old.”

“Oh,” was James’s only response.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Over pizza and beer on Clint’s floor, Darcy brought up the former assassin to her…whatever Clint was to her.

“James is probs going to have a hard time adjusting to life outside Hydra, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Clint replied, talking around a bite of pepperoni pizza.  “He’s going to need all the support he can get as he picks apart his memories too.  Some of them are going to be pretty awful.  Nat was a mess when we got her from Red Room.”

“So I was thinking….”

“You want to adopt him, don’t you.”  It wasn’t a question.  The archer knew very well that his lovely…something…was the type to take in strays.  It was how she’d ended up with an archer with daddy issues and a fear of commitment.  He’d still been reeling from the teleportation trip to the past*, which oddly enough involved the Winter Soldier when he met Darcy.  She’d taken one long look at him and dragged him to the nearest pizzeria.  There, she extracted his life story over beer and a large pepperoni, mushroom (and pineapple on one side) pizza.  Since then the two had been friends, but sometimes when they were alone, like now, it felt different, more like a date.

“It’s not like I’m going to become his legal guardian, HawkAss,” Darcy protested, breaking Clint’s inner monologue.  “I just think maybe we should invite him to hang with us every once in a while.  Maybe take him shopping or show him all the cool toys he didn’t have way back when.”

“The Brookstone on 53, that massage chair, you know the one.”

“Yes!” Darcy crowed, “It’s the modern marvel of the world.  And then down to 51 for Dippin’ Dots.”

They continued to plan the trip to the mall, laughing.  Clint reached for his beer and took a sip.

“Dude, you totally just drank out of my bottle,” Darcy said.

“What?  No I didn’t?”

“Yeah, you did, look at the label.  That’s light beer; you drink regular because you don’t have your mother’s thighs.  Indirect kiss, dude.”

“Well…” Clint considered that.  “I guess it’s better than no kiss at all.”

“Was that,” Darcy blinked.  “Were you flirting?  With me?”

“Maybe?  And maybe I can’t hold my booze and my mental filter is gone.  I don’t drink that often, you know.”  He blinked at her and asked a question that had been burning in his mind.  “What are we?”

“We’re friends, and crazy people, and maybe we’re dancing on that line between friends and more than that.  I don’t know,” Darcy said.  “I just know that you’re always there when I need it, and that I trust you to catch me if I fall.”

“And you always get me out of my funk when I’m too deep in my head,” Clint replied.  He’d needed that fairly often when they first met.  “And I would trust you with anything.”

“So maybe we’ve fallen over that line I mentioned.  Maybe we’re more than friends.  What do you think?”

“I think I definitely feel differently about you than I do about anybody else, but I also think I’m too drunk to make a commitment.”

“Or you aren’t drunk enough,” Darcy countered.  “You do have a thing about commitment.”

“I do,” Clint admitted.  “But even if I don’t want to say ‘together forever’, I do want you to know I want things with you that usually come with that tagline.”

“And I have a super hard time with staying in one relationship.  I get attached to multiple people and try to form a, I don’t know, a pack.  But nobody wants a pack.”

“I do.  I miss having a family.  When Steve and Karen moved out and Nat was relocated to D.C. and Thor went back to Asgard for that family crisis, my little broken family kinda fell apart.  It’s coming back together, but I still wouldn’t mind having that connection with multiple people.”

“So we both want something here, and the big thing that scares guys off of me isn’t an issue for you, and I see no problems,” she said with a smile

“I do,” the archer said.  “We haven’t even kissed.”

“Fixable problem, mi amor.  Come on over here and help me solve that problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnd cliffhanger. *runs from angry mob*
> 
> *For what Clint is referencing here, see Passages from Secret Bit of Right From Wrong.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr, at http://bairnsidhe.tumblr.com/  
> There's a giveaway going on here: http://bairnsidhe.tumblr.com/post/110232382504/give-away
> 
> Teaser (You know what's coming, so to speak)  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “You’re sure you want this?” he asked, gently palming the side of her face and brushing a thumb over her lips.


	21. Hawk Shock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here there be smut!
> 
> Darcy gets some lovin' from our favorite archer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To naruturd for comments and to Schaf for kudos.

Clint leaned over and almost spilled the beers.  Darcy laughed and helped him move the bottles to his coffee table, which she also scooted out of the way.  Those precautions taken, Clint moved over to better have access to Darcy’s inviting lips.

“You’re sure you want this?” he asked, gently palming the side of her face and brushing a thumb over her lips.

“Yes,” Darcy said in a breathy voice, eyes fluttering shut for a second.  Then she opened them and looked Clint in the eye.  “You?”

“God yes.” And with that he dipped his head down to capture her lips with his.  He started gentle, testing, but then he slowly began deepening his kisses.  Darcy responded to the deeper kisses with little moans of pleasure and when one opened her lips he tried slipping his tongue slightly between them.  He tasted light beer and pepperoni and a hint of cherry lip balm.  Darcy slipped her tongue past his so smoothly that he didn’t notice until she started mapping the back of his teeth with it.

Darcy was not ashamed to admit, she read a lot of erotica, or as she liked to call it, ladyporn.  Often in those stories the first kiss is one of passion and fire and the phrase ‘tongues battled for dominance’ got used a lot.  With Clint it was totally different.  It was a kiss of love and respect and compassion and long understanding.  Their tongues didn’t battle, they danced, like a tango, back and forth and keeping pace but never fighting for space or control.  She’d kissed a lot of guys before (don’t judge, sophomore year at Culver was a difficult phase in her life) but Clint was different.  He tasted of beer and pizza which wasn’t too different, but he let her take the reins after a while and he never pushed farther than she wanted.  He was also the first guy to have asked if the kiss was wanted before doing it.

Darcy was feeling decidedly warm and horny.  She pushed Clint back and started to strip off her light blue sweater.  Underneath was a dark blue camisole and her bra, but she left those on.  Freed from the hot fabric of the sweater, she straddled Clint’s lap and renewed their kissing. 

Clint’s hands found their way to Darcy’s back, rubbing in circles as he let her ravage his mouth.  When she took his bottom lip in her teeth and mock growled, he slid his hands under the camisole and lightly scraped his fingernails along her back.  They were short, they had to be for his archery, but they were enough for her to let out a moan and start sucking a hickey on his neck.  He stopped her, but only long enough to divest himself of his purple tee shirt.

“Nowhere that shows, Darce.  You know what the vultures outside the tower are going to say if they see a mark.”

“Good plan, Clint.  I forget, since they mostly leave me alone.”

“And I’m glad they do.  It’s bad enough the things they say about Nat and Cate and me for working at S.H.I.E.L.D., I don’t want them dragging you through the mud too.  I hope this hasn’t ruined the mood.”

“Not at all.”

She ducked her head down to his collarbone and nibbled and sucked along its length and Clint put his head back and moaned.  Darcy raked her fingers across his ribs and up his pectorals, circling the nipples.

“Christ, Darcy!” Clint groaned.

She only smiled in response.  Then she leaned down and sucked his right nipple into her mouth and rolled it around with her tongue.  Clint’s hips bucked and he pulled her up to kiss her again.  He slid a hand up her camisole and unhooked her bra, and when he’d worked it free he trailed kisses down her neck, across her collarbone, down into her cleavage and then across to her nipple, where he suckled, teasing her with minute scrapes of teeth and flicks of his tongue.  Then he switched sides, giving equal treatment to the other nipple, until Darcy was writhing beneath him, trying to undo his pants.

“Easy, easy.  Let me take care of you.  Is it all right if I take care of you?  I want to taste you, Darce, ‘s that ok?”

“Please,” she whined, and her hands moved to her own pants where she had slightly better luck getting the button undone and the zipper down.  Clint helped her get out of the jeans and her wet panties too.  He was slightly surprised to see they had a purple bow and arrow on the red fabric in the front.  He’d have to ask Darcy if she often wore archery panties or if she’d planned for tonight, but right now Darcy was in no state to answer trivia like that.

Clint dipped a finger in her and moved some of the wetness up to her clit, which was now swollen with desire.   Using the moisture he rubbed little circles, drawing whines and pants and finally a cry followed by spasms from Darcy.  He shifted his hand and pushed first one then a second finger inside her pussy and curled them, searching for the G spot.  When he found it, Darcy called his name and fisted a hand in his hair. She guided him down, and after all, he had said he wanted to taste her, so he let her guide him to suck and lick her clit as he rubbed circles on her G spot.  She tasted musky and rich, decadent, almost.  He shifted just enough to lick around her pussy lips and dart his tongue inside with his fingers, lapping up her juices.  She pulled impatiently at his hair and he moved back to the one-two combo of fingers and tongue.  He reached up to her chest with his free hand and caressed her breast before running a finger around her nipple.  She came, moaning and twitching and gasping for enough air to say his name.  He removed his fingers from her, licking them off and smiling down at her relaxed form sprawled across his sofa.

“Don’t mind me, just having an after-glow here,” she mumbled.  “Gimme a minute and I’ll take care of you.”

“Take as long as you need.  You want some juice to replenish your energy?”

“Yes please, you have cranberry?”

“Of course, it’s your favorite.”

He went to the kitchen and poured a tall glass of cranberry juice for her, which she promptly downed before curling up on the sofa and beginning to snore.  He tucked one of the purple velvet throw pillows under her head and laid a purple and black blanket from the back of the sofa over her body and tucked her in.

He headed back to bed and quickly ducked into his bathroom for a hot shower and a chance to take care of himself.  One quick orgasm (and how could it be anything but quick with her taste and smell still permeating his senses and the memories of her moans echoing in his ears), and he finished his shower and got dressed in flannel pajama pants and went to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr, I'm bairnsidhe there as well.
> 
>  
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “You are a lot snarkier than I would have thought, based on Steve’s stories. I approve.”


	22. A talk with Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James has an early morning chat with Tony Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines day!
> 
> Sorry, this chapter is not super romantic sap, but if you want smut, check out the side story chapter posted today.
> 
> Thank you to tamarama and naruturd for commenting, and to Titzi for kudos.

James awoke at dawn. Through Jarvis he ascertained that none of the Avengers were available other than Tony. Jarvis also told him Tony had been in the lab since he woke up at 2 am.

“Would you mind asking him if he’d like company?”

“Of course.” There was a slight pause, the Jarvis said “Sir said you are welcome to come up to the labs at any time. He also said that if you want him to ‘trick out your arm’ he would be willing.”

James wasn’t sure how to handle that offer. It was rightly his handler’s decision who got to poke at his arm. But it did need servicing soon. Maybe he’d just talk to Tony about it, without letting him actually near the arm.

“I’ll be right there, Jarvis. It is the 89th floor, right?”

“That is correct.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Up in the lab, Tony was looking at holographic blueprints when he heard a loud cough.

“Oh, hey Frosty, come on in.”

“I’m already in. I have been for five minutes. What are you working on?”

“I’m building a suit for Peps. She doesn’t like sitting at home while I risk my life, so she asked for a suit. Rhodey has War Machine, which is way cooler than Iron Patriot, so it seems fair to give her one too. I’m having trouble with the chest plate though. I thought I had a good design but all my simulations have the chest piece caving in or otherwise failing.”

“Well of course. Look at the design. You gave it…what’s the word…let me see if I can…. Breasts! You gave it breasts. Battle armor for women shouldn’t be too different than men’s.”

“So if I flatten the slope and trash the tit-plates,” Tony muttered as he swiped away and redrew lines around the glowing white figure of a slim woman. “There we go. Mark three, simulation number one, go.” The little light figure started battling off little robots of light and then larger figures armed with little guns that shot light bullets. The simulated fight lasted ten minutes, before returning to the stationary figure. A stream of information flowed down next to the figure. Tony hmm’d and huh’d at the figures before closing the hologram down and turning to James.

“So, what brings you to my humble lab at,” he glanced at the clock. “Six in the morning.”

“Woke up. Figured it’d be good to stay up and fix the jet lag, get back on the right schedule. You were the only one up.”

“My keen powers of observation tell me there’s more than that.”

“You have ‘keen powers of observation’ that somehow missed me standing behind you making faces for five minutes. Yeah, I think if you believe that I got a bridge somewhere I can sell ya.”

“You are a lot snarkier than I would have thought, based on Steve’s stories. I approve.”

“Maybe it’s new. How would I know?”

“Actually, I had some ideas about that. I’ve been working on a side project with Bruce for a while, since Christmas before last. It’s been sort of on again off again and I’m not sure it’s ready to test, but we modified Extremis to help repair failing brains, instead of re-growing limbs. The idea was Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and other degenerative diseases, but I think it could work with your super soldier serum to help you recover the lost portions of your mind.”

“You’ve been working on this for longer than you even knew I was alive.” It was as much a question as it was a statement. Why would Tony have been working on the fix to his problem for so long?

“It wasn’t originally for you, Mr. Ego.” There was an underlying hostility that told James he shouldn’t push. Then, suddenly, all the tension melted out of Tony’s body and his face rearranged itself into an easy smile as artificial as anything James had ever seen. “So, what did bring you to my door at the ass crack of dawn?”

“I thought you and I could talk about my arm. I don’t want you touching it yet, not without my handler’s approval, but I wanted to know if you knew anything about how it works.”

“Actually, I know a fair amount about it. When Steve and Karen first went on their little revenge road trip, they sent me the original schematics from the Russians. It was crude, but effective, neural bonding that allowed you to move the arm naturally. They used titanium for strength and durability, but the weight required it to be bolted to your scapula and clavicle. You need a checkup at least twice per year of active use for the neural bonding, since it tends to degrade. I could probably fix that for you if you want.”

“Would I need to be sedated?”

“Well the procedure would involve taking your arm off, exposing all the nerves that are wired to your arm, doing a little surgery, and then putting a brand new StarkTech arm on you. To put it succinctly, it’s going to hurt like a bitch if you do it with no drugs. But I think I could rig it with just a neural blocker so you can be awake.”

“Maybe. I want to talk to my handler about it.”

“Okay. You do that. By the way, when I got the word you were coming in I did a little reading on brainwashing and reviewed the data Karen sent me on the equipment they found, so even if you don’t want to try the extremis-based brain reboot, I can get you a specialist to help you with the ol’ brainpan.”

“No doctors,” James’s voice was firm. Then he softened a little. “At least not yet, I’m not ready.”

Tony nodded looked down. Dum-E was pulling at his pants leg. “You don’t happen to have a thing about robots, do you?” he asked James.

“Not that I know of.”

“Good. Dum-E wants to say hello.”

Dum-E released Tony’s pants and rolled over to James. He put out his little robotic claw hand and James shook it. Dum-E let out a beep of happiness and twirled around, before reaching into a little compartment in its side and pulling out a ball.

“He wants to play fetch. You don’t have to.”

“No, sounds…” he searched for the right word. The words for non-mission-relevant things were always harder to find. “Fun? I can do it.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

When Steve and Karen woke up they proceeded to make breakfast, but when the three plates were ready and James wasn’t coming out of his room, Karen went to check on him. The room was empty and Karen’s heart was in her throat until Jarvis spoke up.

“Mrs. Rogers, James is in Tony’s lab. He appears happy and comfortable. I can tell him that you have prepared breakfast if you would like.”

“Yes please.”

James came down from Tony’s lab a few minutes later, with a slight smear of machine oil on his hands and a smile on his face.

“I see you met Dum-E,” Karen said, nodding at his hands. “Wash up. Breakfast is getting cold.”

“I think I like the little guy,” James said as he washed his hands. “We played fetch. It was fun.”

“That’s great,” Karen replied as she poured another glass of orange juice to replace what Steve had drunk while waiting for James.

They were seated and eating when James said, out of the blue, “Tony said he thinks he could upgrade my arm. And I wouldn’t need to be unconscious.”

“Do you want him to upgrade your arm?” Karen asked. There had been an odd note of reluctance in James’s voice and she didn’t want Tony bullying James into anything.

“I don’t know. It needs maintenance at least, and if he could do that…I’d be alright with him doing the maintenance and cleaning, but a new arm…. I don’t know. You’re the handler.”

“And it’s _your_ arm. If I demand anything one way or the other about something so personal I’d be no better than the handlers you escaped.”

“Listen to the lady, Buck,” Steve said around a mouthful of pancake. He swallowed, then grimaced. “Sorry. I know you want to be called James, but it’s hard to remember sometimes.”

“Actually, I don’t mind so much, as long as you don’t do that thing you did on the Helicarrier. Expecting me to be someone I’m not yet.”

“Speaking of which, I never asked you about why you said something awfully close to wedding vows while getting yourself beat up, Steven.”

“Karen, I can explain,” Steve said with a panicked look. James snagged the last of the bacon before leaving the room. He didn’t need or want to be in the middle of that conversation.

“Jarvis, is Clint or Darcy available?”

“Agent Barton is in the common area with Miss Lewis. They have indicated that they would be amenable to seeing you.”

“Great. Thanks pal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here: http://bairnsidhe.tumblr.com/
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> "Well, I guess we just thank the god that watches over human science experiments that we're both in a place we don't have to use our nastier party tricks unless we want to."


	23. Meet the Science Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James meets the members of Team Science!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to naruturd for commenting, ILY dear!
> 
> Additional thanks to Snowdove30 for kudos.

Clint and Darcy had been lazily staring at each other over comically large mugs of coffee and occasionally brushing their feet up each other's legs under the bar when Jarvis told them James was looking for them. Immediately Darcy straightened her back and smiled, before giving Clint a look. They shared a significant glance, and Clint said "Sure, more the merrier, right Darce?"

"Right," she replied.  "It's cool J, send him up."

Clint stretched, finished off his coffee in a single gulp and turned to Darcy. "You going to try to recruit him right away? Guy's dealing with some stuff right now, he may not want to complicate life with partners."

"I don't complicate things," Darcy said, mock-affronted, "I am an _un_ complicator. My whole job with Jane is predicated on my ability to uncomplicate her life. And I wasn't going to just leap on him and ask him. These things take tact, and delicacy."

"What takes delicacy?" James asked as he walked into the penthouse.

"Nothing," said Clint, as Darcy chimed in with "It isn't relevant right now."

James paused. Something was different. He could tell the dynamic between the three of them had shifted somehow, but how and between whom he didn't know. He also couldn't tell if it was a good shift or a bad shift. He decided to let it be and treat them the same way he had before.

"So we never really finished that tour, did we? We got to 76, and then went for food," James said casually.

"Well, 77 is a buffer floor, mainly to act as Steve and Karen's attic. Not that the two of them will need it, those two travel light," commented Clint. "Above that is 78 and 79, which Natasha has although I'm not sure she's coming back this time."

Darcy rubbed his back in an effort to soothe him. She wasn't sure what the current feeling between the two spies was, but she knew Clint missed his friend. "Clint's on 80 and 81. 82 and 83 are Bruce and Betty's floors. Betty converted 83 into a lab."

"You realize I don't know these people, right?" James asked, hoping to break the tension.

"Well, then lets introduce you, Winter," said Clint perking up. "Jarvis, can you ring down to see if Bruce and Betty are available?"

"Of course Agent Barton. Dr Banner and Dr Ross have issued an invitation, if you would care to join them for tea on the 82nd floor."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The 82nd floor was done in neutral taupe and grey, with accents of sage green on the curtains. It was all very peaceful and serene and the slim brunette woman that met them at the elevator doors kept her voice low and even, adding to the impression. The short, curly haired man beside her smiled and invited them in, where they found seats on the long sectional facing the view out the wall of windows. The throw pillows were a pop of color in an otherwise very neutral place, the vivid green and violet like flowers in a dry grassland. James made the mistake of complimenting them.

"Tony picked them out," Bruce said. "Hulk green and the same purple as the only pants we've found that fit both me and the Other Guy."

"Tony has boundary issues, but we keep the pillows because I asked Pepper and she told me what they cost, and we are NOT going to throw them off the balcony, Bruce." Her voice was suddenly steel.

"Sorry, the Hulk?" James asked, cautiously.

"Where have you been the last decade?" asked Bruce skeptically.

"Mostly frozen in a Hydra facility. I think I was involved in an assassination in Kenya in 2009, though."

"Oh. Wow. Sorry about that. The Hulk is a manifestation of rage and fear that turns me into, as Tony puts it, a giant green rage monster. We've tried treatments, but nothing lasts. The last time we tried anything, Steve shrank into his pre-serum state and had to go on the run, so I quit trying."

"Hey at least your rage is being channeled by you and not by someone else. The Winter Soldier just got pointed at people by Hydra."

"Well, I guess we just thank the god that watches over human science experiments that we're both in a place we don't have to use our nastier party tricks unless we want to."

"Agreed." James and Bruce clinked their teacups together.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

After tea with Bruce and Betty, Darcy asked them to drop her off on 85 to pour a pot of coffee down Jane's throat, feed her and get her up to 89. Clint offered to help, and James wound up tagging along for lack of anything better to do.

"No, Jane, real food. Tony gives us real food, give up the Pop-Tart box."

"It'll take too long, I left a calculation running last night I need to check it."

"The calculation will still be there after I scramble some eggs and make some toast. James, use that muscle-y super soldier body and get the Pop-Tarts away from her, Clint, make with the toast."

"Bossy pants," Clint said teasingly. "Who are we, her minions?"

"Give in, Clint, it's easier if you just let the orders happen. And this isn't too bad."

"Oh, holy shitballs, I didn't trigger you did I?" Darcy asked concerned, the open box of eggs in one hand forgotten.

"No, I'm fine."

"Trigger? What trigger?" Jane, in her curiosity, finally released the box of processed sugar to James.

"I used to be brainwashed. It isn't a bad problem. Darcy would actually make a pretty good handler."

"Thinkin' of cheating on Karen?" Clint teased.

"No. I can't, not without a severe crack in the programming." Suddenly he switched topics. "Karen wants me to see a doctor for my brain, thinks they can undo the conditioning."

"Do you want to?" Darcy asked, stirring the eggs in the pan.

"Maybe. I'm not too fond of doctors though, no offence, Dr. Foster."

"I'm not that kind of doctor," she told him. "And if you were brainwashed I could see why a shrink would put you on edge."

"But it sure would be nice not to have to fight for every memory."

"When Thor gets back I can ask him if Asgardian technology could solve the problem."

"We'll see," Darcy said. "In the meantime, eggs are ready, and all the good little scientists will eat them." She scooped a portion of eggs onto a plate, Clint added the toast from the toaster and James fiddled awkwardly with the box of Pop-Tarts still in his hands. Thankfully Dr. Foster was a fast eater, because soon they were headed back up to 89.

"By the way, 84 we didn't mention, because we discovered that Betty's lab equipment is messed with when Jane and Thor have happy-funtimes, so Tony moved them up a floor and made 84 another buffer floor. So Thor and Jane have 85 and 86, Tony and Pepper have 87 and 88, and 89 is the communal lab for all the scientists to have playdates."

"I am not a small child, Darcy. I don't have playdates."

"Well, obviously you aren't a small child if you can set off a seismograph with the sheer power of fucking," Darcy said casually, watching Jane's face go red, "but did I or did I not have to threaten to take away the rights to the radio telescope if you wouldn't stop hitting Tony with pencils?"

"He called Thor a dumb blonde!"

"My point is made, you all have the emotional maturity of five year olds. Ergo, playdates."

Darcy and Jane got off, still bickering good naturedly, and Clint offered to show James the training room designed with Steve in mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know where to find me.
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> "Did you show him "Cap and Baby Presidents"?"


	24. Video Killed the Radio Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James gets to enjoy some video entertainment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Naruturd, my muse. (I finally got around to having them watch A Goofy Movie, finally!)
> 
> Also, I blame a friend from Texas for Cap and Baby Presidents. Chip, this is your fault.

James really enjoyed the solid-holo cityscape that popped up out of nowhere, and he enjoyed running and jumping walls. He less enjoyed it when civilians started fleeing past him. He ran in the opposite direction of the panicked runners and found himself face-to-face with a...something... on a glider throwing bombs. Reaching for his guns, he remembered it wasn't real. None of the civilians were real, the thing on the hovering board wasn't real, and he had no clue if a real weapon would damage the set-up that Steve used.

"Hey, Winter! Stick your arms out." came a voice over the intercom. Hesitantly James did so, and a pistol made of light dropped into his hands. It felt real. He drew a bead on the hovering thing's head and pulled the trigger. The thing fell from the sky and landed on the ground. He checked to make sure it was dead, not even considering where that instinct came from, and as he stood all the fleeing civilians crowded around him yelling praise. He basked in it for a moment before asking them to clear a path. They did so, and he went back to the place he started. The city melted away and Clint came through the doors.

"What did you think?"

"It was," he paused a second. "Fun. I liked the civilians."

"I thought you might. Steve's terrified of them, he always rushes back to the start point before they make it to him. I think he's afraid someone's going to hand him a baby. You ever see the pictures of Captain America holding babies? They were promotional but he looks like someone handed him a live bomb, only if someone ever actually handed him a live bomb he'd just defuse it, but the babies, oh man he looks scared stiff."

James laughed and for once it wasn't a dark rough thing of menace, it was just a laugh. "Well, you can't defuse a baby."

"D'you know how to use the internet yet?" Clint asked, randomly.

"Yes. It seemed important."

"Great, somebody posted a video Steve holding babies pictures with the heads of the babies replaced with presidents saying famous quotes. It's hilarious. I lose it every time FDR says “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, because Steve just looks like, no, we also have to fear this baby."

"Can we watch it?"

"Sure. Let's go up to the common room and watch on the big screen."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

An hour of youtube videos made from Steve's war propaganda later, Darcy found them sitting on the floor eating popcorn and making each other laugh harder.

"Did you show him "Cap and Baby Presidents"?" she asked.

"First thing we watched, Darce."

"I'm still not sure why that guy saying he didn't have sexual relations cracks Clint up so bad."

"90's thing," Darcy said to James, before turning back to Clint. "And you did it without me?" she said, mock affronted. "You'll just have to make it up to me in back rubs. Corralling the Science team was murder on my spine today. Tony actually hid under a desk when I asked him if he'd gotten any sleep last night. I also may need to amputate my feet."

"Awww, Darce, c'mere, I'll get your back. James, are you up to foot duty?"

"I think so..." a flash of memory entered his head as Darcy's foot was placed in his lap.

_His hands on a dame's foot, rubbing out the sore spots from dancing too long, her voice light and breathy as she encouraged him. "It feels so good."_

"What did you say?" he asked Darcy, aware he missed the last thing she said while lost in the past.

"Feels great. You done this before?"

"I think so. I remember doing it, and Karen says my muscle memory is preserved, so I wound up retaining the knowledge of things like dancing and how to give foot rubs."

"So you can dance?" Darcy perked up at the thought. "I always wanted to learn swing and foxtrot and that kind of thing. Think you could teach me?"

"Maybe. I would want to refresh my memory. All I have is muscle memory, not the explanation of how to do it for the lady's part."

"To the youtube, then?" Clint asked them, reaching for the remote. Darcy whined until he gave her the remote and started rubbing her back again.

They watched several instructional videos and some exhibition videos and Darcy thought that she could probably keep foxtrot and swing and blues separate in her head, so she and James planned to get together on 92 which hosted a small dance floor, in addition to a bowling alley. James asked about that, as it seemed odd.

"Tony works in mysterious ways," Clint intoned.

"Don't say it like that he has enough ego, thank you," said Darcy, slapping Clint's arm. "But yeah, it was Tony's idea, and there's no accounting for Tony ideas."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Darcy had to go back to work to ensure her charges had some form of midday calorie intake, and Clint had an appointment to go to with Maria Hill, Security Chief of the Tower, so James went back down to 76.

Steve and Karen had obviously made up, as they were cuddled on the sofa watching an animated movie. They were singing along to it

"I've got less than an hour, and when this is ended, I'll either be famous," Steve sang in a rich tenor voice James almost remembered.

"Or you'll be suspended!" countered Karen, her alto voice sounding smoky and rough, unlike the smooth voice she'd had at the house in Greece. He wondered what had changed it, but it cut to close to acknowledging weakness for him to ask.

"Just think of all the time I've been losing waiting until I could say gonna be on my own, kiss the parents good-bye. Gonna party from now 'til the end of July! Things'll be goin' my way, after today," they sang together.

"I wish that this was the day, after today," finished Steve. He looked over at James standing by the elevator doors.

"Say one word, Buck and so help me..."

"Actually I thought it was... Give me a second...." He fought for the word, and Karen paused the movie to come to his side in case he was about to have an episode. "It's a good word. I don't have this trouble with bad ones. Happy? No, that's not it."

"Try talking around it. How did you feel?"

"Warm. And glad you weren't fighting. And I....Sweet! That's the word, I thought it was sweet."

"You ain't gonna give me crap for singing along to a kid's movie?"

"No. It was a moment of innocence. I had enough of mine stolen to know how precious it is."

"Why don't you sit with us for the rest of this one," Karen suggested, "and we'll let you pick the next one?"

So he sat through the rest of the movie, most of which he either failed to understand due to memory gaps, or found funny for reasons he could not have explained if someone held a gun to his head. When the credits rolled, Karen pointed him to the large cabinet in the wall with racks of DVDs. Overwhelmed by the choices available, and still adjusting to a handler who gave him choices, he grabbed at random from the section with the brightest colors.

"Mulan?" Karen asked, peeking around his arm. "Steve loves that movie. So do I but it's more of his favorite than mine. It has war scenes in it, you gonna be ok?"

"Yeah, it's animated, how bad could it get?"

"Actually, Buck, some of the animated stuff nowadays can get pretty dark. But Mulan's not too horrible. Disney stayed less dark."

Together they watched Mulan, and while James could see why a person with Rogers's background would empathize with the protagonist, he himself was more intrigued by the art style and the songs, which the Rogers also sang along to. He let himself relax and somewhere along the way Karen covered him in a blanket and halfway through her pick, Princess and the Frog, he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm here: http://bairnsidhe.tumblr.com/
> 
> (PS here's a link to the song Steve and Karen were singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoIFa94fD3c)
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> "Thou shalt not poach a rationed dame," he remembered saying. "There's three million women in this city and you can damn well find one that doesn't have a fella or a ring on her finger."


	25. Dance Dance...Revelation?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Darcy dance, and certain things become known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To naruturd, sorry I didn't reply to your comment, I'm still dealing with stuff.  
> Also to Bulmaveg_Otaku and AvengingInTheTARDIS (mferretti), for kudos.
> 
> This is the last chapter I'll be posting for a while, and it ends on sort of a happy note so I don't think you'll need Fluff World prompts, but they are open during the sabbatical. For those not aware, my Dad passed away a few weeks back and writing serious stuff is hard right now. Fluffernuts is easier, which is why Fluff World remains open.

A light pinging sound woke James from his nap.

"James," Jarvis said, "you have a meeting with Miss Lewis and Agent Barton in half an hour.  I thought you should be made aware."

"Thanks pal," James said blearily to the ceiling.  Thinking of all the things the history books had said about the notorious ladies man Bucky Barnes he muttered, "I gotta reputation to uphold, I suppose.  Is there any fancy clothing in the closet?"

"Yes, of course.  Sir wanted you to have everything he considers essential so once he heard of your reappearance he stocked the spare room on this floor with everything you might need.  May I suggest dispensing with a jacket for this evening?"

James changed into a nice pair of pants (black) and a shirt with buttons (white), like what they had seen in the videos.  He shaved, pulled his hair back with a stretchy tie from one of the drawers that Jarvis guided him to and sprayed a mist of something woodsy smelling over himself.

He met Darcy on the 92nd floor and saw she had changed into a swishy purple skirt that was faintly shimmery, and a bright pink top that really highlighted how endowed Darcy was.  He quickly yanked his eyes back to hers and felt his ears burn that he'd been that easily distracted.  Clint had offered to DJ, whatever that meant, but he was up in the little booth overlooking the dance floor.

"I'm going to start off with "Troubled Waters" as sung by Cat Powers, a nice slow blues beat," he announced over the speakers.

The music started slow, with a raspy soprano voice coming in as James took Darcy into his arms.

 _I must be_  
_One of the devil's daughters_  
 _They look at me with scorn_  
 _I'll never hear their horn_

James rocked Darcy slowly as she got the feel for the bouncing rhythm he set, before starting to move her around the dance floor.  
  
_Sometimes_  
_It's like chains_  
 _Sometimes I hang my head_  
 _In shame_  
 _When people see me_  
 _They scandalize my name_

He leaned in and whispered in her ear "I'm going to spin you, ok?"

"Sure thing," she said breathily.  He spun her and she laughed.

 _I'm going down_  
_To the devil's water_  
 _I'm gonna drown_  
 _In that troubled water_

They danced around the floor lazily, getting to know one another's movements.  Darcy learned that James liked to put a little hip action into the steps even though the instructional videos said to keep the bounce up and down.  James learned Darcy preferred to keep tight pressure between her right hand and his left.

 _It's coming 'round my soul_  
_It's way beyond control_  
 _I must be one_  
 _I must be one_

He spun her again, this time without warning, but she followed admirably.  He tried spinning her out into an open position before spinning her back to him.  Her swishy skirt flared up and he caught a glimpse of what looked like shorts and she ferociously blushed a deep scarlet.  He decided not to mention it.  He really liked her, and didn't want her thinking he was being inappropriate.

They ended the dance simply, and he bowed over her hand.  She blushed again, gentler this time.

"Next up we have "You Do Something To Me" by Frank Sinatra, a nice jazzy swing tune," Clint announced.

_You do something to me_   
_Something that simply mystifies me_   
_Tell me, why should it be_   
_You have the power to hypnotize me?_

The music was faster and soon he and Darcy were doing guy scoots and sweetheart turns along with spins.  The song ended before he really wanted it to, but the next song was a foxtrot, and it was another fast one, but with periods of smoother music that allowed Darcy a chance to rest.  They took a break afterwards and Clint provided them with bottles of water.

Darcy seemed to enjoy the swing dances more, and obviously she and Clint were in tune enough with one another that he picked up on it from the booth as the music slowly went from even mixture of blues, swing and foxtrot to just swing.  James wondered what that meant.  Were the two of them a couple?  _"Thou shalt not poach a rationed dame," he remembered saying.  "There's three million women in this city and you can damn well find one that doesn't have a fella or a ring on her finger."_

_"Geez Bucky, lay off.  I ain't likely to get a dame of any kind, and I wasn't poaching, Dottie just needed help with the groceries."_

"James?  You okay there, big guy?"  Darcy was snapping her fingers in front of his face like she was trying to wake him up.

"What?"

"Flashback?" she asked.  When he nodded, she smiled and asked "good or bad?"

"I think I was lecturing Steve on not making moves on a married woman."

"First of all, I'm using that as leverage," announced Clint who'd come over at some point.  "Second of all, I'm a little worried about why that particular memory came back now."

"I...may have been worried that you two are...that I was... that...um."

Darcy looked at Clint.  "I know we said we'd go slow, but I don't want him worried any more than I want him freaked.  You ok with that decision?"

"Go for it Darce, stuttering does not come natural to ex-soviet assassins."

"We, that is Clint and I, are yes, in a relationship.  But that relationship was started with the understanding that I don't do well with two person relationships and would be looking for a third to balance me out.  Clint agreed to those terms, rather enthusiastically.  We kinda snaked it on you, but this was a date.  That is, if you want this to have been a date?"

James started crying.  He it felt like a great weight he'd been carrying for ages had been lifted from him.  Memories cascaded back into place, telling him why he felt that way.  Worried that the two people who lifted that awful weight would think he was rejecting them, he pulled Darcy in for a hug then reached out and snagged Clint's shirtfront and pulled him in too.  The three of them hugged, tears still streaming down James face, but a smile shining through them.

"I take it this means yes?"

"Yes.  It means yes.  I don't know why but I feel like..like..."

"Like you've been hauling the worlds suckiest backpack and now you get to put it down?  That's how I felt when I first realized I was polyamorous."

"And I felt that way when I realized it was ok to be bisexual," Clint said.  "I never even considered I might be polyamorous until Darcy.  But I want to try it.  What about you?"

"I remember feeling like I was freak, I remember telling the priest and getting called a sinner and being cursed at, I remember having to be real obvious about the dames so nobody would notice the way I looked at fellas.  I remember going with a dame and only feeling halfway happy.  I remember it all."  He shook his head.  "But it's all ok now.  There are words for how I love and who I am and it's not… **I'm** not broken."

"Not from that anyways," Darcy said pragmatically.  "I wanted to wait another couple of days until Thor got back to see if he can get you the good shit for the flashbacks and other symptoms before even bringing this up.  I don't want to rush you while you're still in an emotionally vulnerable place."

"We'll take it slow for a while," Clint said, "if that's ok with you James?"

"Yeah, yeah, slow is good."  He looked up at them and dashed the remaining tears from his face.  "We see what this Thor guy says and then we maybe go get dinner?"

Clint and Darcy nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy's outfit can be found here: http://www.polyvore.com/darcy_goes_dancing/set?id=150880820
> 
> Troubled Waters can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BINDTk8kd_w  
> You Do Something to Me can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlVN2xquAsI


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exposition mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific warning: very vague reference to non-con. Not enough that I feel it really merits a change to the archive warnings and it won't be brought up again. But I'm letting you know now. Also Bucky has a panic attack. Because brainwashing and such tend to do that and nobody really knows all his triggers.
> 
> Much thanks to all who have been with me for the hiatus. To uconnhuskiesfan_wintershockship, lizlou, GaleRN, and adescendingcadence for kudos, and to uconnhuskiesfan_wintershockship and naruturd for comments.

 

Thor’s return was as always, heralded by a loud fwooshing sort of sound and Betty storming the common lab to complain about sensitive equipment and inconsiderate deities, prompting Jane to bolt for the elevator.  As usual the initial reunion involved Jane attempting to climb Thor like a tree, however, this time they had a witness who had never seen this ritual before.

“Can…” the words stilled in his throat.  The past few days he’d made great progress in asking for things he needed, but this was uncharted territory.  A little louder and firmer, he tried again.  “Can you please not?”

“Mmm..wha?  Oh, James, this is Thor, my boyfriend.  Thor this is James.  He’s…” Jane waved a hand vaguely.  “It’s a long complicated story.”

“Greetings, James.”

“Hi.  Look, Dr. Foster, I kinda get the ‘my fella’s on leave’ thing, but can you take it…not here?  I’m getting some very confusing memories from this.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, James.  I wasn’t thinking.”  She slapped Thor’s bicep.  “Put me down.  Wounded warrior needs to not see this.”

Thor released her reluctantly, but now his interest in the young Midgardian was peaked.  What sort of war wound could cause a need to not witness love?  Fortunately, his Jane was ever perceptive.

“Memories…good or bad?”

“Both.  When it’s ones I wanted, good, but it wasn’t always.  They didn’t care if I wanted or they wanted, didn’t want, had to even if…Not sure about all of them, don’t know if I…”  He let out a broken sound.

“Do you need Karen or Darcy?”

“No.”  He didn’t know much but he knew he couldn’t risk his handler or his girl. His control was on an edge.  The memories were all women, not men, and he was more likely to snap in the presence of a woman.  “Clint.  Need Clint.”

“Jarvis, we need Barton in the Penthouse, STAP.”

“STAP?” James asked.  “Thought it was ASAP?”

“ASAP is ‘as soon as possible’.  STAP is ‘sooner than actually possible’,” Clint said as he dropped out of a duct.  “What’s the emergency?”

“Memories.  All mixed up and wrong and I may have done something horrible.  More than standard.  The kind of horrible I can’t… Darcy should never touch me, I don’t deserve a dame like her touching me.”

“If you think anyone but Darcy decides that sort thing you have **not** been paying attention.”

“But I-”

“No you didn’t.  Whatever you think you did, you didn’t.  They did, if it happened and if it happened then you are also a victim.  Don’t carry their sin for them.  _They_ don’t deserve to get off that easy.”

“I…ok.  The woman with red hair in the pictures you showed me…do I know her?  Did I do something… _bad_ to her?”

“You loved her,” the archer bit out.  He paused, weighing his words before he said them.  “You shot her. But she got shot a lot before that and continued to get shot after.  Being shot is her normal.  The love hurt her worse and for longer.  But not because of you, because other people used the love she had for you as a weapon to cut her down.  Again, not your sin, don’t carry it.  She’d tell you the same.”

“Ok.”

“Hey Thor,” Clint said lightly.  “Good to see you again buddy.  Darcy missed you.”  Turning back to face James he asked “is it ok to stay, or do you need Karen?”

“Can Jarvis put her on the phone?”

“Of course, James,” said the voice of the omnipresent Jarvis.

“James?” Karen’s voice came through the speakers.  “What is your status?”

“Operational.  Non hostile environs, two known quantities, one civilian one combat capable, one unknown quantity.”

“And again in Civilian?”

“I am safe in the Tower, I am with Clint and Dr. Foster, and Thor.  I am…hurting but not hurt.”

“Memories?”

“Yes.  Not good, not ones I want to talk about.  Is this acceptable Handler?”

“Affirmative, you do not need to say things you don’t want to say.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.  It’s why you have me.  Do I need to stay on the line?”

“No.  I’m better now.”

“Dinner tonight, 6 pm, Shrimp Daivolo and cookies in mugs.  Be there on time and you get to pick your own chocolate chips.  See you later.”

“See you.”  There was a click signaling the end of the connection.  “Jarvis, set a reminder?”

“Of course, James.”

“What do you want next, Winter?”

“Darcy said Thor could…” he made a gesture near his head.

“Ok, we’ll ask.”  Clint turned to the very confused Asgardian.  “Does Asgard have special medicine for memory issues, particularly very widespread but specific retrograde amnesia?”

“What manner of injury could cause that?” Thor asked incredulously.

“Targeted electric shocks to my brain,” James said dryly. 

“If the records are correct, the equivalent of a lightning bolt in power, but sustained for up to five minutes and administered at least once per experienced week for about fifty years real-time, but anywhere between two to three years experienced.” Jane added.  Thor looked at her with horror.

“Odin’s beard, what monster could conceive of such a thing and for what purpose?”

“Nazis could, Hydra could, Arnim- _fucking_ -Zola _sure as hell_ could,” he listed the names on his fingers “and as for why?  To keep me from being human.  To keep me a weapon.  Keep me needing them to tell me what to do, so I would kill for monsters I once killed.”

“A wretched fate.  Indeed I did not know the Norns had such venom in them.  And yet you are free now.” The question went unspoken.  But James heard it anyway.

“Programming error, essentially.  Base protocol from childhood says ‘protect Steve’, my handler said ‘kill Steve’, my system hard rebooted and I remembered just enough to hate them again.  But not enough to be a person.  I’m still learning that.”

“You have my well wishes, but the assistance I can offer is limited.  For the injury you suffered, there are only three I have ever known with the skill to heal you.  Lady Eir, the head healer, who does not leave Asgard, my Mother who is still recovering herself and cannot afford to spend her energy where she might want, and my brother.”

“Thor,” Clint said lowly. “My buddy, did you miss the part where he’s _insane_ and tried to take over the world?  I was under his mind control for most of that but I sure remember it.”

“That tool was not of his making, and likely had been held by whatever power gave him the Chitauri for many millennia. It is only because of his great understanding of minds that the power it held did not leave you a drooling imbecile.  And he who did these things was as far removed from the brother I once knew as to be a completely different person.  When he was my brother, he had care, great care, for those soul-wounded.  If he remained as my brother, he would gladly treat this ill.  But my brother died before you ever met me, Clint Barton.  And the one who wore his visage died as well.  Loki is gone.  I merely mentioned him because I once knew him when he could.”

“I’m getting from this that the answer is no,” James said.

“The answer is ‘not easily nor without risk.’ I know the basics of mind walking, but not enough to cure you completely.  All I can do is show you how to mend yourself as best possible.”

“I would like to try.”

“Then I will help as best I can.  You will need the help of one who knew you before the injury, and one who knew you during that fifty years.”

“The Captain.  Steve.  He knew me before.  I’m not sure I’d want help from anyone who…I wasn’t around good people.”

“Natasha,” Clint said.  “You knew Natasha.”

“I shot her, according to you.”

“Also according to me she loved you.  A real love, one I don’t think she ever repeated and I say this as her ex.  I certainly never got to see her as open as that.”

“If that’s true, how would you know?”

“Due to mutant related shenanigans, I got to see her meet you for a rendevous.”

James brought his metal hand up to facepalm.  “I still can’t believe I’m living in a world where that is a reasonable explanation.  You sound like a baseball announcer ‘due to rain and mutants the game will be delayed until Sunday.’  I can’t leave anybody alone for a minute can I?”

“Seventy years, Winter, it’s different.”

“I took my eyes off my best friend for thirty minutes and he signed up for dangerous human experimentation and didn’t tell me about it until he went AWOL behind enemy lines.  In my limited memory, not paying close attention to people leads to them doing stupid shit.”

“Point.  I’ll call Nat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is gold.
> 
> If you want to come pester me on tumblr, it's bairnsidhe.tumblr.com


	27. Some (re)Assembly Required

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Steve come to grips with the reality of helping James in their own ways, Darcy is asked to do something, and Clint is pretty damn drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For GamingGhoul, for kudos, and GaleRN, Liebekatze, and uconnhuskiesfan_wintershockship for comments.
> 
> Also, you may have, if you follow my tumblr, seen that I now have a Patreon. While it won't stop me updating, not feeling like I have to job search 24/7 will help me get stuff done faster. As the primary income for myself and MommySidhe right now, every little bit helps keep us fed, medicated and not homeless.

Natalie Rhodes had waited in line four and a half hours.  In a government building with no working AC in the height of one of the hottest summers in Bostonian history.  It was going to be worth it though, this was the first time she was going to get something done correctly, officially, all t’s crossed all i’s dotted, as a fully functional human being that had not been fabricated by someone else.  She had used her own knowledge, some websites and a very helpful lawyer who drank in her bar sometimes to craft _IT_ , the perfect will and testament for someone who might need to disappear but did not want to be declared dead.  It was gorgeous, the best tool she’d ever made, allowing her to feel alright about Ilsa and her daughter, without worrying that she might need to be Natalie Rhodes again.  The heat, the cranky receptionists pointing her to another line or another form like she was Mario looking for Princess Peach, the four and…three quarter hours wait, it would all be worth it.

She stepped up to the notary with a huge grin.

“Sorry, we’re closed,” said the woman, and she didn’t look too repentant, either.

“You still have,” Natalie checked her watch, “ten minutes on the clock.”

“We’re closed, English not your native language?  Cerado, comprende?”

That may have been the worst thing she could have said.

“Your accent is atrocious,” Nat said in flawless Spanish.  “And you shouldn’t assume that because I disagree with you I don’t speak English,” she continued in Russian.  “You should just do your damn job,” she ended in her adopted North Eastern accent.  Natalie Rhodes lay in metaphorical tatters around her feet, her raw, undecided self all that remained after it tore out to guard Nat, all anger and pain.

“I said, we’re clo-” the woman’s protest was cut off by her own name plate being pressed to her throat.  They may have made Natalie leave any weapons at the door, but this was not Natalie, it was Nat, the raw emotion of her core, and everything was a weapon.

“Stamp.  The.  Damn.  Pages.”

The woman stamped.

“Spasibo,” Nat said as she walked out, more at home in this unformed state than ever before.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

As fate would have it, Nat walked into her bar only moments after Ilsa had finished failing at removing a rather drunk patron.  Nat cocked an eyebrow at her.  Ilsa had been a Latverian Olympic wrestler before a knee injury cost her the Gold and subsequently she was granted leave to move to anywhere but Latveria.  She was still bitter about that, apparently Latverian doctors were better for her daughter, but her husband had died in a Fantastic Four attack and little Victoryana had nowhere else to stay but with her mother.  Ilsa’s shrug said more than words could have.

“Name is Boris.  Wanted to see Natasha after third drink, ten dollars says soon he speak of Moose and Squirrel.”

“Oh lord,” sighed Nat.  “This is for you, I wasn’t planning on using it so soon.”  Ilsa took the folder and her eyes widened.  Nat had given her control over all of Natalie’s assets until further notice.  “Come on, you Artemis wanna be.  You know you can’t handle my vodka at home, why do you think I buy any different for my bar?”

“Nat?”

“Yeah, Clint, it’s Nat.”

“Which one?”  Ilsa cocked an eyebrow, Nat looked at the folder.  Ilsa decided this was not her circus nor her monkeys.

“The real one,” Nat whispered.  “The one I only showed you once, that day in Budapest when you had an arrow to my neck.”

“Are you ok?” Clint asked, concerned.  The ‘real’ Nat only came out in times of danger or heartbreak.

“Yeah, I think so,” Nat’s mouth quirked.  “Remind me to apologize to Betty, those books about accepting your emotions might have been helpful.”

“You can do that at home.  We need you.”

“Widow-me or Natasha-me?”

“You-you.  U U, huh, heh.”  Natasha rolled her eyes at drunk Clint.  He didn’t often drink hard stuff, legacy of an alcoholic father, so when he did it was usually bad and she handled him gently.

“This me?  Real Nat?  Why do you need her?”

“Thor can help fix James.  Can mind-walk him or somthin’ an’ James wants to do it, but we need people who knew him before, Steve pretty much, and durin’ an thas you.  But not Natasha or Natalie or Natalia.  The Nat you were with him, when you loved him, when you ran to him in the rain like a cheesy rom-com ending.”

“How did you know about….”

“The teleporter incident, saw you meet him.  Need that Nat to get him better, need him better cause he looks like a kicked puppy every time he can’t remember if he likes something or when he burns the toast or dear God, when he thought he erased Darcy’s Netflix queue.”

“You care about him.”

“Might love him.”  Clint shrugged awkwardly in Nat’s supportive embrace.

“Thought you and Lewis were doing…something.”

“She might love him too.  It’s weird, but it works, except James thinks he’s broken and he’s not.”

“That’s for him to decide.  He has to figure it out on his own.”

“Needs you too.  For Thor and the Asgard brain voodoo.”

“OK, where’d you crash the plane?”

“Didn’t crash it.  ‘S in a field north of the city.”

“You always crash when you’re emotionally invested.  I’m driving, and _you_ are drinking water and napping.”  She ushered him to her vintage black Shelby Cobra and pulled water and Advil from the glove box.

“Than’s Nat.”

“Of course, Yastreb.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Steve had been extatic when he learned he could help Bucky heal.  He’d been less happy when he heard that Karen would be coming with him into Bucky’s mind.

“What do you mean ‘anchor’?”

“Captain, you shall be entering James’s mind, his memory, these places are likely to be both familiar and upsetting, both of which can trap you within.  I know you Steven Rogers, you will see the pain caused by these villains whilst you slept and wish to fix them, to protect and guard your friend, and if you cannot destroy the demons that you see, you will wish to protect him in some bright memory you share.  You can do neither.  You cannot fight and you cannot run, you may only lend your shieldbrother your strength and love.  To keep you safe, someone who can pull you back must go with you, lest you fall to temptation.  Your soul’s mate would be the best choice.”

“I don’t want her seeing some of the things I saw, back then.”

“And what about what _I_ want, Steven Grant Rogers?” Karen demanded.  “You’re already doing it, you’re pushing your need to protect people onto perfectly capable individuals who can make up their own goddamn minds!”  She slapped his bicep hard enough to count as spousal abuse if her husband weren’t a super soldier capable of taking a hit with a small missile.  After shaking out her hand, she said, “it’s not like I didn’t see some of it before, remember?  The special issue about Capone, nearly getting your block knocked off while all I could do is tell you not to give up?”

“The War, though, Karen, the War was…bad.”

“Wars generally are.  Do you think that they’re better or worse than living on the streets after an abusive, junkie mother tried to kill me and my sister beaned her on the head with a metal folding chair?” she challenged.

“We’re not supposed to compare scars, Karen,” Steve sighed.  “Sam said not to.”

“Exactly.  I can handle this. If I can’t, I’ll tell you and you can pull us out.  I’m there to make sure you do pull us out.  I’m the safety on this thing.”

“All right.  But if you’re anchoring me, and Clint’s obviously going to anchor Natasha, who’s going to represent now?”

“What?” Karen looked confused.

Steve looked at Thor.  “I’m a second generation immigrant from one of the most superstitious countries in the world, especially then.  Ma and Dad might’a been God-fearing Catholics, but that wasn’t goin’ to stop Sarah Rogers nee Cassidy from teaching me ‘bout the Fair Ones an’ the Laws o’ Three.” Steve’s voice got a heavier Irish lilt added to the dense Brooklyn that happened when he thought about his past.  “Ya got the Past, that’d be me, ya got the Present, relatively speaking, with Natasha, but somebody’s got to tether the third point, Buck’s Future.”

Thor laughed.  “You are a man of many surprises, Steven.  My little lightning sister has the closest bond of those not already chosen.  I was going to ask her to walk with him, and I will guard her from becoming affixed, although that is less of a fear for her position.”

“Darcy, you’re seriously going to ask _Darcy_ to go into that?”

“Ask me what?”  Darcy bounced into the room from the elevator, sat on the sofa next to Thor and put her galaxy-print legging-clad legs across his lap, resting her black VANS shoes on Mjolnir.

“My little lightning sister, I would ask a boon.”

“My big lightning brother, I’ll grant it, if I can and it isn’t illegal or gross.”

“I would have you stand at the third point in the healing of James’ mind.  As Steven has so intelligently deduced, there must be three who know him, or versions of him, to open the gates of his mind so he may find his past, which affects his future and present as well.”

“From what Clint told me, that means I’m in his brain, right?  All his memories and baggage and stuff out where I can see it?”

“Aye, and as you must know, not all of that ‘baggage’ is pleasing to see.”

“Baggage so seldom is, Thor,” Darcy said, pulling at the sleeve of her red oversized sweater. One shoulder slipped to reveal a silver bra-strap, and Karen adjusted it back for the distressed woman.  Darcy switched to fiddling with her bracelet.  “Does he know, that I’d be in there?”

“He knows he needs the assistance of friends to unlock his mind.  I have yet to tell him you make the best candidate for the third position.”

“If he’s alright with it, I’ll do it.  But I know he holds things back, and I need him to be ok with the fact that he can’t in this case.”

“I shall see if that is what he wishes, but I should have thought you more curious as to your suitor’s past.”

“Can’t sneak anything past you, can I?”

“Not for long, lightning sister.  What troubles you?”

“James had people messing with his head for a really long time, I don’t want to do the same crap to him.”

“T’would  be the opposite, they entered without permission and hurt him with great malice and hatred.  You wouldst ask to enter on his private mind, to heal him, out of love, unless I miss my guess.”

“Maybe, it’s kinda early to throw around the ‘L’ word, big guy.  Remember Ian?”

“The knave who thought a kiss of relief entitled him to more than you would give?”

“That one. I learned my lesson in 0 to 69, trust me.”

Karen snorted, Steve gave her an odd look, and Thor just excused himself.  Darcy left soon after Karen whispered ‘tell you later’ just a touch too loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
> Patreon: http://patreon.com/bairnsidhe
> 
> Feedback is love. Fanart gets you the right to name an OC. I'm looking for villainous last names in this fic, make a fanwork and take revenge on a person you hate by having me give a squidnazi their name.


	28. Pulling Together: Depressions and Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone united, Thor helps James start finding his lost memories. But some things are easier to remember than others, and not all nightmares are bad dreams. Luckily, James isn't alone.

James reacted moderately well to the idea of Karen being in his head, she was his Handler and the part that was most fighting his desire to do this felt better that his Handler supported this.  She sat him down and explained that in this one case, she was also Steve’s Handler, because it was too risky for the Captain to do this without someone who could order an extraction and she was the only one who could.  The part that wasn’t Soldier muttered *stubborn punk* in his brain.

He knew abstractly that Nat would be in there, but if Clint was going too, he figured the archer could pull the Widow out of anything too bad, and his discussions about mind control with Clint made him sure his fella would take care.

Thor was an unknown, but he was necessary.  Darcy, well he did not react the way anyone expected when told about her role.

“Stop if you need to,” he told her.

“You are seriously okay with this?” she asked him

“I lo- I care a lot about you, Darce.  I know you, or I wouldn’t be able to break programming enough to care this much.  And if I know one thing about Darcy Lewis, it’s that she would never hurt me.  I need you, and I trust you.  Not just in here,” he tapped his head, “but everywhere else.  If I’ve kept things back it’s because they’re too hard to say.  Not because I doubt your strength or your kindness.”

“You would not get smacked so often if you treated me like that,” Karen remarked to a gape-mouthed Steve.

“He was always better at that, the talking to dames bit, than me.”

“You mean thinking before speaking?”

“Hey!”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Nat entered the building’s garage, jabbed Clint in his ribs until he woke up.  The hung-over archer moaned as the elevator doors opened to the wall of windows letting in the mid afternoon sun.  Nat stiffened as she saw Yasha.  He turned and grinned his sunshine grin at her.  She gulped, and then realized he was grinning at Clint.  *He’s been wiped,* she reminded herself.  After he finished fussing over Clint and getting him comfy on one of the mats on the floor of the penthouse, she approached, trying for neutral bordering on friendly.  A new person meeting another.

“You must be Natasha.  I’m told I shot you, but that you didn’t mind that as much as a civilian might.”

“You only shot me a little.  I minded failing a mission.”

“That I can understand.  I’m also told we used to…um.”

“We were lovers.  Or rather, BW16 was lover to the Winter Soldier.  I am not her any more than you are him, even if I do remember.  I am Nat.  You are James.  And our missions are the same.  We will get our revenge by taking back what was stolen.  Memories, emotions, they took them, and we _will_ get them back.”

“You, he understands,” James said, and only Nat understood him.

“He’s only a child, he needs simple.  I’m not simple, but I am efficient.”

“He’s a killer.”

“He was born last April.  He’s a baby.  A deadly baby.”

“Okay, officially lost by the spy code,” Darcy said, not so subtly putting her arm around James waist.

“Sorry Angelface.  It’s hard to…it’s one of the…”

“We were trained to compartmentalize, Darcy,” Natasha said.  “We were talking about one compartment.  Another being made so that our emotions would never see daylight.  His is young, killed and reborn in April.  Mine are older, born when I came to S.H.I.E.L.D.  They are more nuanced.”

“Okay.  But the whole ‘lovers’ thing?”

“A long time ago.  How old do you think I am?”

“Late twenties, maaaaybe thirty if you age well.  I’m not guessing higher because you know where I sleep.”

“I’m fifty,” Natasha laughed.  “We were lovers when the Cold War was winding down.  I moved on.  Got married.  Got widowed.  Met Clint.  Learned how to be a person.  I’m not her anymore.”

“No way!”

“Bastardized serum derived from his blood.  I’m stuck at this age, physically.  Mentally is such a different ballpark it’s a parking lot next to a tennis court.”

“Part of me wants to be envious, part of me wants to buy you the biggest margarita known to man,” Darcy said.

“Just still be my friend.  You may see things…I did bad things for bad people.”

“And now you do good things, because you freaking _can_.  Like you said, you aren’t her.”

“Thanks Darcy.”  Natasha hugged her, before going to the mat beside Clint to lie down.

They took their positions, James in the center, and two mats going out at an angle from his left, holding Nat and Clint, two from his right, holding Steve and Karen, and Darcy and Thor at his feet.

“You will sleep deeply soon,” Thor told them.  “I have asked Jarvis to put the trance inducers into the air of this floor, then cleanse it when we are asleep.  We will meet in my mind, as it has the best access.  When you see a threshold, cross it.  I will explain further in my mindscape.  Rest, Shield-family, the Man of Iron has the watch.”

“Sure do,” Tony said over the intercom.  “Night night.”

They closed their eyes one by one, and fell into sleep.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

James stood in dense fog.  Ambient twilight lit the area, but gave him little to no clue as to where he was.  He could see others, but not identify them, friend, foe, other versions of him, he couldn’t tell.  He hated it.  As his heart rate went up a line of prismatic light began to outline a door, then the handle, like an optical illusion drawing of something three dimensional but not.  Thor had said threshold, so James grasped the light-handle and pulled, stepping into a large chamber of stone and silver, with a floor of sand the color of gold.  One by one the others joined him, and at last Thor emerged from an arch that wasn’t there before.

“This is my mindscape, or part anyway,” the Norse God said.  He didn’t seem as big here.  It might be how oversized everything else was.  “From here we will stage journeys into the critical parts of James past.  Our Captain will go first.  I can summon the door and you attune it to a memory-point, but James must open it.”

He waved and a generic white door appeared.  The Captain touched it, and it warped in an odd way that was almost like it wasn’t changing at all and also like it was completely different.  James stepped up and turned the knob that hadn’t been old brass before and opened the plain pine door.

Suddenly all of them stood on a narrow porch, as a smaller Steve and a much different James talked.  The group waited in silence.

“I remember this.”  He rounded on Steve.  “That suit had been mine, but I grew an inch and a half that winter, so Ma gave it to you, and your Ma hadn’t finished fitting it when she…shit, I’m sorry Stevie.”

“It’s okay,” Steve reassured him.  “You’re remembering.”

“The shoes were mine too and we hadta stuff newspaper in the toes, but that was cheaper than getting you new dress shoes.”

“Yeah, and you and me, we tried to finish up the fitting…”

“And I stabbed my fingers something on twenty times ‘fore you kicked me offa sewing and had me trimming excess.”

“You couldn’t sew worth shit,” Steve laughed.

“You on the other hand…”

“It came in handy later.  That chorus tour gave me plenty of chances to hem up stuff and fix seams.”

“You didn’t happen to…I don’t know, use that to get some ‘artistic inspriation’?” James asked.  “Wouldn’t mind seeing that sometime, all those ripe tomatoes and you redder than all of ‘em.

Karen laughed.

“He would have been eaten alive or at least pounded into a less stupid shape when I met him if he had.  He was sooo bad at flirting.”

“Yeah, I was kinda like all the girls kid brother, only, you know when they needed to get away from a creep.  Then they were half in my lap and calling me Sugar.  Until the creep left, and my lap was empty a dame and my hair was getting ruffled,” Steve elaborated ruefully.

“Is there more?” James asked, as the building started to fade.

“Aye, there is more, Captain, if you could attune the door.” Thor gestured to the only still-solid part of the vision, the old battered door.  Steve touched it and it became steel, riveted and sturdy.

“Not what I had in mind,” he commented.

“But what I need,” James told him.  “I can feel it.  Behind that door is a very big puzzle piece and I want it back.”  He opened it with a wrenching shriek.

It was a lab.  James, bloody nose and swelling eye was being dragged to a table.  Karen gasped when she saw the small man in the lab-coat turn.

“Zola,” she hissed.  “That rat bastard.  I should have known.”

“I remember this part.  I don’t want to, but I do.”  James was pale.

“If you need to move on, we can,” Darcy told him.  “You got it, and we can go.”

“Not quite, my little lightning sister.  Remembering is one thing, accepting it is another.  This is a demon in his mind, a Mare of the Night.”

“Nightmare, big guy, bad dream is a nightmare.”

“Nay, Darcy.  A nightmare of which you speak is mostly harmless.  This is a spirit creature called a Mare of the Night.  They invade injured minds and draw power from torment.  We must banish it, but only James, the good Captain and his anchor may do so.  They draw power from fear, and will attack you if you interrupt the feasting.”

“Don’t care.”  Karen rolled up her sleeves.  “Where do I hit it?”

“In the feelings.”

“Is that an Asgardian euphemism?”

“No.  Your target is the feeling it is causing James.  Destroy that and it will die.”

“Which one?  The one on the table, or this one?”

“Both.  I’d start with the table.  It will take longer but you risk detection less.”

Karen walked to the table, opposite Zola as he ranted about his genius.  She touched Bucky’s arm.  Slowly he seemed to feel her and his eyes twitched to her.

“What do you feel?” she asked softly.

“Fear.”

“Of what?”

“Dying.  Never going home.”

“Is home a place or person for you?”

“Home is Stevie.  Home is Brooklyn.  Home is…love.”

“Then I can give you a promise.  You will not die here.  Everybody dies, but you don’t die here.  And you don’t die because Home comes to you.”  She grabbed behind her to snag Steve.  “HE is Stevie, he is Home.  He will come.  I know he’s bigger, but you adapt, at least I did.”  The two smile at each other.

“ _Stevie_ landed a dame like you?  Pull the other one lady.”

“Oh I see how it is, Buck I can gain a hundred fifty pounds of muscle and bone and never get sick again and getting a dame is the unbelievable bit.”

“You, and I say this as a friend, are terrible with women.”

“No argument, but you know what they say about men and grapes, it takes women stomping the shit out of them before they become something respectable to have at the dinner table.  Besides, the sex is great.  The beefcake machine gave him super sex powers.”

“Not listening, la la la la.”

Karen laughed.  “Still scared?”

“Of you talking more about Steve and sex.”

“I’ll be gone in a bit, won’t do it again.  Just know that this is not the hill you die on, and Steve comes, and you find home again.  I promise.”

“Seal it with a kiss?” he winks at her.

“Sorry, rationed.  So very rationed.”  She flashed her rings at him.  “But I know someone who will give you as many kisses as you want when you go home.  And you will.”

He smiled and the phantom Zola thrashed in pain, morphing into an evil horse like thing.

“It is weak, strike now!”

“James, you know you didn’t die here, you know you found Steve, you know Brooklyn is right where it’s always been, why isn’t it dead?”

“Love.”  Darcy blinked.  “He said home was love.  I can’t kill that thing, James, but I know we can help you fight it.  Clint, bow, arrow, now.”  Clint drew from a quiver he hadn’t had before and nocked a bow that was also not around earlier.  “James, meet Cupid,”

“HEY”

“Shut it, I’m being symbolic. Gold tip that sucker and hand it to him.”  Clint obliged.  “Shoot the demon horse.”

James did, and it exploded with such force they all landed on their butts in Thor’s arena mindscape.

“That could have gone better,” said Nat dryly.

“It could also have gone much worse Lady Widow.  Mares of the Night are feared for a reason."


	29. Pulling Together: Deception and Desperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat's turn.
> 
> Trigger Warnings for Drugs (not that the people taking them want to but they're in there), self-induced vomiting, and General Red Room Fuckery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For uconnhuskiesfan_wintershockship.

“So I guess it’s my turn,” Nat said as she dusted off her pants.  “Unless Steve has more?”

“Nay, the good Captain has done his part.  He has revealed to us Bucky and Sgt. Barnes.  James may now access them anytime he slumbers to retrieve more memories.  Now you must reveal the two selves you knew of him.”

“Two…” James sounded confused.

“Duality, Buck, you know this,” Steve told him.  “Light and Dark, Soft and Hard, Summer and Winter, none stronger than the other and both needed for either to be.  Ma taught you, too.”

James blinked and suddenly was a lot more like the man on the porch in the first trip.  “There will always be two.  But I was only the Winter Soldier, they didn’t let me be more.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” said Nat coolly.  “Get me a door.”

Thor gestured and another plain white door appeared.  Nat lay both hand on it, a look of fierce concentration on her face as the door warped.

“What’s wrong, Natasha?” Steve asked.  “It was pretty easy when I did it.”

“I’m nearly twice your age, mentally speaking, Steven, and I had my memories messed with too, this is like digging up concrete to get to what I need.”

“If we’re going to Natahsa and James’ time in the KGB, how are the non-Russian speakers going to know what’s going on?” asked Darcy.

“Minds seldom work on the level of language, Darce,” Clint told her.  “Like why it’s hard to make your internal monologue louder.”

“That,” Thor said, “And direct exposure to the mind of someone with All Speak gives some…benefit in understanding.”

“Almost,” Nat ground out.  “There.”

The white door was now a sheer red curtain with black lace at the bottom that hung in mid air.

“This memory doesn’t take place in a bordello, does it?” asked Clint, a little nervously.

“It was nineteen eighty four, Clint, these were common.”

“Book or year?” Darcy asked sarcastically.

“For us,” Natasha gestured at James and herself, “both.  Doors gave you the ability to hide things.  We were not permitted doors.”

“Enough, I can feel that leading to something bad and I don’t want us bickering or sniping at each other,” James said.  Everyone looked at him.

“What he said,” Karen said in a firm voice. 

James tugged on the curtain and they stood in a barren courtyard, a young woman in a dancer’s leotard fought desperately against a taller, stronger, metal armed man in body armor.  She finally broke out of his grasp, vaulted up using a wall and got her legs around his neck.  He tried to dislodge her with his arm, leaving clear bruises on her thigh as he pried at her leg, but only managed to turn and stumble when she tossed her weight.  Rolling free the red-headed woman flashed a feral grin, and suddenly everyone understood what this was.  He advanced again, only to be stopped by a stern woman in a tight bun.

“Enough!  You did adequately, sixteen.  Now it is time for your vitamins.”

Both of them silently held out their hands to accept pills from a guard.  They dry swallowed and were led to a sparse room with two cots.  When the guard left, the blank faced Soldier disappeared, and was replaced by a caring man, who held the woman’s fire-red hair off her face as she vomited up the pill into a drain in the corner.  When she finished, she swished a bare spoonful of water from a glass around her mouth and swallowed it.

“They’re going to notice the weight loss if we keep this up Yasha.”

“Talia, you know what that shit does to you.  It’s bad enough what it does to me, and I burn through it faster.  One of us needs to stay clean.”

“But does it always need to be me, my beloved?  Why can’t I carry it for you a while?”

“Talia, only one of us is getting out of here, and it will be you.  You must keep your strength for the day that you get your chance.  It is too late for me, my bloody spider, I cannot get out, but you… you can climb that web all the way out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You won’t be.  They take and destroy when they cannot control and they will figure out you cannot be controlled, my Talia.  They will take me away from you, and you must show them you broke, so that you can be free one day.  Promise me.”

“Upon my ledger, Yasha.  One more entry.”

The two sat on a cot together, her body curled in his lap.

“You are precious to me Talia, if I could go with you, I would.”

“I understand.  Sing it again?”

The man she called Yasha began to sing, and the tune was familiar but the words were off, and in a Brooklyn accent.

“Oh, the beaten bloody spider climbed up the spider web,

The cruel and bloody rain came and flushed the spider out,

But the stubborn bloody sun came and dried up all the rain,

And the smiling bloody spider came up the web again.”

“Well that’s creepy,” Darcy said.

“It used to be the blooming, bloody spider before it was the itsy bitsy spider, Buck only changed a few words,” Steve told her.  They watched as Talia fell asleep in the arms of her lover.  Without warning the room shifted and the blank faced Soldier stood in front of the harsh woman and a man in a Russian officer’s uniform, as they told him his interactions with sixteen were damaging future ability and that sixteen would be sent to a children’s ward.  He stiffened visibly.  “When?”

“Tomorrow,” the harsh woman informed him.

“May I say goodbye?”

“You are no longer of use to us here,” said the Russian officer.  “You will be transferred immediately to main headquarters.”

His eyes turned back into the sparking blue of life.  “Like fucking hell you will.”

“You need a firmer hand.  Or did you not notice you were speaking English?”  It must have been rhetorical, because a shock-prod hit his knees and he bellowed as he went down.  The scene faded into the only door, a rich wood with a polished silver-colored handle.

“He didn’t meet me that night, so I knew he’d been taken,” Nat told them.

“What children’s ward?” asked James.  “I knew what it meant, but I’m not…”

“Odesa.  It was a kill or be killed arena full of potential black widows who weren’t quite making the cut.  I killed seventeen children between ages ten and eighteen, I was the oldest and the strongest and the best.  It was physically very easy, but I could not have done it if I hadn’t been told that I needed to look like they’d broken me.  Desperation drove me, I had to get clear, I promised.”  She touched the door and it warped into a metal and tinted glass car door.  James opened it and the two stood on a deserted road, a man huddled behind Natasha.  The group watched as she stared the Winter Soldier in the eye.

“Yasha,” she called out with concealed but present hope.  “My Yasha.”

“I am not yours,” he said mechanically.

“Tili Tili Bom,” she tried desperately, an old code phrase.  When he did not respond, she looked him in the eyes and said “do it then.”

The shot was clean, and put her down long enough for him to snatch a case and walk away.  From the vantage of the group they could see him mouthing ‘tili tili bom’ to himself with a slight crease in his brow as she struggled upright.  The scene faded, and the group stood on gold sand in a stone hall again.

“They lied.” Nat sighed.  “I was shocked because after Odesa they told me you’d died on mission.  A mission you hadn’t told me about.  They tried to make me believe you had never cared.  They even tried to get Lena to convince me you had taken her to bed as well.”

“It was Red Room, deception is what they did.  But I don’t see your sister doing that.”

“Oh she read the script, but you and I both know she had Underwood tendencies, you weren’t her type and the script wasn’t right for the truth.”

“A good lie fits over the truth like a silk glove on a steel hand.”  James looked at her with a smirk.

“Too bad they never paid attention to their own maxims,” she commented dryly.

“Too bad they didn’t pay enough attention to their widows, Yelena was a horrible choice.  Vasilisa could have done it.”

“Vasi was at Odesa.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.  She asked me to.  She wanted out and knew herself well enough to know her choices were limited.  I made it fast, better than she could have gotten.”

There was a moment of silence and Clint held Darcy’s shoulders as James touched foreheads with Nat.  They were praying, but the words were near silent.  When they stopped, Nat hugged him tight for a moment before letting go.

“What next?  I mean, he already remembers what he’s done with Darce, so…” Clint trailed off.

“My lightning sister must give him a door that is his.  Into his mind.”  He summoned the door.  “You know him, Darcy of the House of Lewis.  Now show him what you know.”

Taking a deep breath, Darcy touched the door, and it became a rippling silver pool hanging vertically in the air.  James touched it and watched the quicksilver goo undulate and cling to his fingers.

“How do I open it?”

“You don’t,” said the Thunder God simply.  “You step through.  We cannot follow without your asking.  And you have not reclaimed yourself enough to ask.”

“We can arm him though, right?  Like the evil horse thing getting shot with my bow,” asked Clint.

“You may.”

“Always wanted to say this,” Darcy grinned, “You have my sword.”  A crackling blade of lightning contained into a sword’s form appeared in front of her before collapsing into a tazer.  “Eh, that works.”  She shrugged as he took it. 

Clint passed him a bow and quiver “Gold tips in case of demon horses.”

Natasha passed him knives.  Steve conjured a replica of his shield.  Karen rolled her eyes and handed him a box.  “Care kit: chocolate, first aid stuff, and lots of water bottles and extra socks.  Trust me, way more important.”

He smiled at her and took the box, putting it with the other things in the bag Thor handed him.

“See you all when I see you.”  He saluted and stepped into the liquid mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
> Patreon: http://patreon.com/bairnsidhe


	30. Apart at the seams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bad guys just couldn't leave well enough alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For LiebeKatze and uconnhuskiesfan_wintershockship, for commenting.
> 
> Also Cliffhanger alert, this is not a drill. I'm editing and will post soon though, so no pitchforks!

They all woke up fairly quickly, except James, who Thor assured them was simply taking longer in his own quest.  Betty and her newest hire, Dr. Cho, moved him to the medical side of the Avengers staging floor.  Clint and Darcy hovered a bit, as they hooked James to monitors to check his vitals and detect dangerous swings in brain activity.  Dr. Cho let them fuss, getting him a better (subjectively) blanket and putting flowers from the florist on 52 by his bed, and just generally acting like concerned significant others.  It was adorable the first five minutes, but five hours…that was pushing it.  Thor had repeatedly assured Darcy that for such a large section of time, staying asleep for a day or more was normal.  His own father slept nearly a year every few millennia to repair and contain his mind.  He got abnormally brisk and dismissive when he needed to use the Odin Sleep.

They would have stayed, they were even setting up a pillow fort and stocking it with Jane’s pop-tart stash when Dr. Cho chased them out and ordered them to go get some actual food.  Like real people.

“That’s my line,” Darcy protested.

“Doesn’t make it less true for you than Jane, babe,” Clint said with a shrug.

“Babe?”  Her eyebrow went up as she leveled a disbelieving stare at him.

“I was only trying it out, James has all these cute little names for you, and I call him Winter, but I don’t have one for you.”

“Goddess, Oh Gracious One, Your Majesty?” she suggested playfully.

“Royal Pain in the Highness,” Tony added before both of them kicked his shins.  As they got on the elevator, Darcy snuggled into Clint’s arm.

“I really don’t mind just Darce, it’s what you’ve called me all this time.”

“Ok, but I wish I had something special for you.”

“Only nickname I ever had that I liked was Shocker.  Because of the taser.  Then that asshole supervillain ruined it.”

“Eh, we’ll get there, Sparky.”

“Call me that again and I tase you.”  She paused.  “Spark’s not bad though.”

“Ok, Spark.  Let’s get you some doctor demanded real people food.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In the interests of getting the most of Darcy’s three major comfort food groups, Salt, Carbs, and Grease, they opted for the food court instead of the restaurants.  After grabbing shakes, two types of chili fries (curly and Cajun seasoned), hamburgers and a huge bowl of strawberry dip’n dots, they settled in to eat.  Clint was aware of more stares than normal and tried to keep Darcy occupied so she wouldn’t get self-conscious.

As Darcy polished off her fries, she tucked her hair behind her ear, tapping on the com to Jarvis that hid in her earrings.  “Jarvis, please run facial recognition on the two men by the fro-yo stand and the woman on the mezzanine by the Torrid.”

“You worried, Spark?” Clint asked lowly.

“Nobody takes forty minutes to pick a fro-yo from a place with four flavors, it’s chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and pick of the month, not rocket science.  And I know actual rocket scientists.  And mezzanine lady is watching us.  Not you, us.  We aren’t being super datey right now, so I’m not laying money on tabloid reporter.”

“But there are like a dozen security measures to even get up here.  You have to get a key card at the front desk, pass by three sets of metal detectors, and Jarvis has that TSA scanner thing in the elevators.  And that’s not even counting what it takes to get in the building.”

“Miss Lewis,” Jarvis came through on her com.  “The three individuals are mercenaries, and I took the liberty of scanning for known associates elsewhere.  You have seven extra hostiles moving towards you.  Should I initiate the Pest Control protocol?”

“Thanks,” she said, shuddering at the memory of the drill for the protocol that knocked people unconscious with intense and disorienting sub-light pulses.  “But no, Jarvis.  This is too public for that one.  I don’t want to subject kids to that light-pulse thing.”  She thought.  “Kids, that’s it!  Can you send every phone in the mall an Amber Alert?”

“No child has been taken.”

“Can you, though?”

“Yes.”  He sounded reluctant.

“Good, do it, but inside the messages to the non-hostiles inform them they need to evacuate the mall floors calmly.  Make something up for the hostiles.”

“I see, well played Miss Lewis.”

“I’m feeling left out Spark,” Clint said.

“Ten little Mercs, jumping on a very bad bed to jump on.  Someone’s gonna fall off.”

“Gotcha.  Hence the evac?”

“Hence.”

“But it’s a Tuesday, Ninjas and Mercs are on Wednesdays, Mad Scientists and Cultists are on Tuesdays.”

“You are very strange,” she paused, “but not wrong, at least it isn’t a Friday.  The world enders tend to happen on Fridays.  Anyway, I’m packing my taser, you got anything?”

“Collapsible crossbow in my bracer, darts in my wallet.  Not the best, but I wasn’t planning on this.”

“Well uncollapse it, they caught on.”  Darcy pulled her taser. 

“Civilian evacuation 90% complete,” Jarvis told her.

“Jarvis, activate the Bo Peep protocol.”  Darcy felt better knowing her earrings, bracelet, shoes and taser all had Tony’s version of Lo-Jack in them.  Now being paranoid about the support staff’s safety was paying off.

The two men faced off against her in a way that focusing on them put her back to the woman.  She didn’t like it, but they were the more immediate threat.  Clint popped some catches and peeled off a layer of leather, revealing a mini crossbow on his wrist, but before he could grab his wallet to get the trick darts, the woman tossed a dull rust brown orb-ish thing at Darcy’s back and without thinking Clint back handed it into an Orange Julius, where it erupted in red smoke that quickly spread.  Darcy got one good shot in before the smoke reached them.

The world went fuzzy and Clint’s last thought was that he was damn tired of being the squishy human one.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

James (Bucky) was wandering through a maze of doors.  Some, he opened readily to find a hidden memory he had long forgotten was cherished.  Others he opened with trepidation, knowing he wouldn’t like what he saw.  He fought off a few more Mares, the twisted and elongated horse shapes that fed on his pain.  In some memories his remembered self fought them too, and in others he was in just as much danger from his own fists.

He had no idea of time, it passed in fits and spurts, some minutes lasted lifetimes, some decades took seconds.  He stopped infrequently to eat from his Handler’s (Karen’s) gift of food and drink, and more often to use the medical supplies.

After a particularly bad Mare attack (he’d spotted Kraus strapping him into the Chair, but missed Hoffman and it almost cost him his life except for the taser), he stepped out into the maze to treat his injury only to see a door like what Darcy made, the rippling mercury pool hanging upright.  The color was off, he noted, purple tinged the reflections and white glares refracted strangely.  He looked at it a moment before the door flushed with red and he leapt at it without thinking.

Darcy stood in a parade rest, wearing an all-black tactical uniform.  Clint stood beside her, dressed the same and also in a firm parade rest.  A shadowed figure marched in front of them, giving a speech he couldn’t hear.  He saw himself dragged out, beaten, bloodied.  The shadow figure gave a command and Darcy sprinted to stab him as Clint drew a bow.

“NO!!!”

“Yes,” said Arnim Zola.

“You bastard, where are they?” James held the tiny scientist up in the air with his metal arm.

“I’m just a reflection of fear, Sergeant Barnes.  Whomever you see, that is only your fears.  I am a harbinger, a memory of a fate not yet come.  What you see will happen, if you fail.”

“If I fail at what,” he bit out.

“You need to wake up.  You need to find them and get them back.  Or they will be used.  As you were, but with better compliance.”

“You are insane if you think Darcy ‘I tased the God of Thunder’ Lewis will ever ‘comply’.”

“She will if they break her enough.  She will if they break the one she loves, if they make him break her.”

“I’m done with the riddles, who has them?”

“New threats, built from old ideals.  I’d be more straightforward but it’s not in my power.  Now wake up, James Buchanan Barnes.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

James’ brain scans went off the chart, quite literally, for exactly 52 seconds before he sat straight up and looked Helen Cho in the eyes and said, “Someone took Darcy and Clint.”

“Not quite true, James,” said Jarvis. “The mercenaries in the mall sector are having difficulty getting past the Rat Trap protocol on level 51.  I estimate two minutes ninety seconds to escape if the glass shattering sonic bomb and incoming aircraft are both successful.”

“Get me to them,” he reached to pull out his IV.

“Get away from that, you’ll hurt yourself, I do it faster anyway.” Helen batted at his hands.  Removing the IV she looked him in the eye.  “Get them back.  Lewis owes me a Mai Tai if I make it another week without prescribing myself a sedative.”

“Lewis promised me more than a Mai Tai, I’m getting them.”

He sprinted down the hall towards the elevator, assessed the time frame and asked Jarvis to get him there STAP.  Jarvis popped a vent in the wall open.  “Redirecting to make it a straight slide to 53.  Closest I can get you.”  The AI seemed tense.

“Copy that,” James said as he slid in.

After a rush through the tunnels of the vents, James kicked out a vent cover and dropped to the empty mezzanine floor.  He saw signs of a struggle, and Darcy’s taser.  He felt the anger flow into his blood like ice water as he vaulted the rail and picked it up out of the mess of broken tables and smashed food.  He tucked it in his pocket as he kicked the merc it felled in a place he'd remember later, and ran to the stairs, vaulted another railing, and saw the nine dead mercs walking.  Clint and Darcy were out of it, incoherent.  He was silent as he stalked up, behind them and incapacitated a scout, who unfortunately let out enough sound for the others to turn and see him.  He rolled his shoulder as he unclenched metal fingers to drop the unconscious man at his feet.  He took a certain joy in the paling of faces as they saw his arm and heard it whirr as he reset it for brutal fighting, not delicate nerve pinches.

He raised the metal arm and pointed one finger at the two woozy people on the floor by the window.  “No,” he rasped, turning his anger into the rough steel voice that was the last sound heard by so many.

A boom shook his feet, and he merc closest to the window grabbed them and jumped.  Ignoring the damage as he rushed the window, James plummeted ten feet before grabbing a closing hatch, dropping inside and being stabbed with a needle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
> Patreon: http://patreon.com/bairnsidhe
> 
>  
> 
> Teaser:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> "Karen said to tell Darcy that she and Clint should stop by for a family dinner, since diving headlong out a window is the equivalent of a super-soldier proposal.”  
> “That mean you’re engaged to half of Europe, and all of New York?”


	31. I <3 Self-Rescuing Princesses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy Lewis is tired of this shit, Bucky wants to get her out quickly, and Clint just doesn't want to be like his dad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For LiebeKatze
> 
> A few notes: I borrowed the concept of Zarda from the Squadron Supreme, who at various points in the comics (and recently in the animated show) get used as the "Anti-Avengers", and are pretty much evil knock-offs of the JLA. She does look a lot like Darcy, except tall and fully capable of using a battle-axe.
> 
> Also, the thing that I will make our birb do, I'm sorry, but it was a form of a part of canon I loved. It ends happy.

Darcy woke up in a large marble covered room. There were columns that ran down it like some kind of ancient palace from Egypt or Rome.  She was dressed in a purple dress that after living with Tony Stark long enough she could tell was real silk.  It just figured.  Her eyes darted around trying to find Clint, or anybody friendly.  She spotted a metal arm poking out from one of the columns.

“James?” she whispered, counting on the acoustics of Monumental style architecture to carry it.

“Princess?” he whispered back, and Darcy fought to control her Inner Heyena.

“Yep, keep calling me that.  I don’t see guards, do you?”

“No, they were here a while ago to change your clothing, I tried to stop them, but…”

“Guys or girls?”

“Guys went to you,” he said miserably.  “I got pinned by a woman and a man.  I was hazy from the drugs and they got my legs in manacles.”

“That is actually a good thing.  We were taken by the Cult of Zarda.  They saw their war-goddess smite Thor like three millennia ago and have been searching ever since for signs of her re-appearance, and long story short, when a co-ed from Culver helped her boss admit a guy named Thor to the ER in Puente Antiguo after having tased him…”

“They put two together with two and got war-goddess?”

“Yuppers.  And the dudes in the Cult of Zarda would know better than to cop a feel.”

“That does not make me feel better.”

“Being nominated figurehead for people who openly call themselves a cult doesn’t exactly take the sting out of it either.”

“Where’s Clint?”

“No idea, they saw us together, so I think they believe he’s the one who ‘corrupted’ me so I won’t kill Thor.”  The doors at the far end of the room opened, and Darcy hissed “play along,” at James.  She sat as regally as she could, and waited for the man in boiled leather armor approach.

“My Lady Zarda,” he said respectfully as he knelt.

“Why was my Honor Guard shackled?” she demanded.

“We did not know-”

“That,” she interrupted sharply, “does not change that he is.  Or was, unless I miss my guess.”

James emerged from behind the pillar, solidly planting himself between the warrior and the door.

“Those locks were pitiful, Princess, I advise you find a better locksmith.  I know fifty-year old mortals who could break out of them.”  She caught his eye and returned the glimmer in his eye at the reference to Nat.

“Understood, Guardsman James.  I’ll see to it once we have located my other guardsman.”

“Other…” the man looked confusedly between the woman he’d been told rejected her soul’s history and the shirtless metal armed man.  His eyes traced the grotesque scarring at the join of flesh and metal, and felt a low rumble hit his ears as the man growled.

“James, to my side,” the apparently returned Zarda snapped.  Almost instantly, the fearsome bestial form was gone from his exit and a caring and gentle man was beside the Princess of Power, helping her down from the dais.

“Stupid heels, why would they put these abomi, ooh red soles, wonder if they’re authentic Louboutin’s, I owe Dame Pepper a boon, and she actually likes these accursed things.”

“If they aren’t that could be seen as an insult, Highness, especially as they have been worn.”

“Shoes that graced the feet of Zarda should be an honor to any mortal, regardless of origin!”

“Ah,” Darcy pulled a face at James, who was a really good actor.  But then, spy, so…  “Cheap Madripoorian knock-offs.  Get them off my feet.”  He knelt and undid the straps as she petted his hair and looked the cultist in the eye, very aware of how this looked.  He broke eye contact as Darcy stepped out of the sky-high gladiator heels.  “Very good, James.”

“Now your feet are bare, Princess,” he said pitifully.

“Then carry me if it distresses you,” she made a show of rolling her eyes, but once in his arms she scratched at the base of his scalp to reassure him.  The designated cult-arguer, who obviously was not sure what to do with this development swallowed thickly.  “Now, where is Honor Guardsman Clinton?”

“Who?”

This time Darcy had no need to act as she facepalmed.  James, on the other hand, stiffened in an insulted way.  “Blonde, fond of the color purple, _best bowman in the world_ Clinton F. Barton.  Honestly.  Highness, I suggest you completely overhaul their intelligence network.”

“Not my circus,” she said, letting some Darcy back into her voice, “I’ll put you in charge of that.  But yes, you who claims to serve Zarda ought to know where to locate the third person taken in your assault on my fortification.”

“Your- that was Avengers Tower, home of your nemesis, Thor.”

“And home of the steadily growing army I wish to have.  I will face Thor one on one as I always have, but I’m quite fond of these modern tactics, and if I’m to lay challenge, I want his shield mates to be outnumbered by mine.  I have already laid claim to Hawkeye, Black Widow, Pepper Potts, and through her Tony Stark the Man of Iron, and a similar claim can be made of the lady wife of America’s Captain, and therefore him.  Efforts were being made upon the Banner-and-Hulk conglomeration, but you interrupted.”

The cultist gaped at her.  She smiled and petted the scar on her guardian.  “This way.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Ian had been raised Cult of Zarda, and was quite pleased to have been promoted to head of the Goddess’s army at such a young age, and the Goddess appearing in his reign was fortuitous.  He even quite fancied her when he’d gone undercover to try to trigger her recollection during the Convergence, and it still galled him that she’d not only _not_ remembered her past glory, but had duped him into helping the detested Thor.

Seeing a junior soldier lead a hulking dead-eyed monster carrying his beloved Goddess as he was about to interrogate the subjugator of her mind burned him, especially as her eyes saw him and she said, calmly, evenly, and so unlike Darcy Lewis that her memories had to have returned “James put me down.  And someone get me a taser.”  The monster obeyed, and slipped an electric blue box into her hand.  She obviously recognized it, and somehow the man knew, because he supplied “it got dropped, I know it’s your favorite,” in a low baritone. 

“Thank you James.” Darcy, Zarda, replied, never taking her eyes from Ian.

Darcy had gone cold, seeing Ian again, then a hot crackling anger like heat lightning took her.  She was not dealing with this from a bridal carry.  On her feet and her favorite super-mini Arc-Reactor powered taser in her hand, she switched it from distance to touch, a modification she’d pestered Tony into months ago.  She stalked up to him and placed one hand carefully on the somewhat insulated leather on his shoulder and dug the prongs into his unarmored arm.  Slowly, like she was in water, she heard her voice say “This is for not recognizing a ‘no’” as she pressed the button, causing him to spasm.  It was a short burst and her hand kept him upright as she heard herself say “This is for attacking me.”  Bzzzt.  “This is for attacking Clint.”  Bzzzt.  “This is for the knock off Louboutins.” Bzzzt.  “And this is because I can.” A hand removed her taser from his arm, and the cool metal pulled her back.

“Princess, no.  You don’t want to cross that line.  I saw what could happen if they broke you.  Please, do not do this.”

“You’re right.  He isn’t worthy.”

“You just tased the Commander of your own army!”

“He tried to sexually assault me once.  Emphasis on the words ‘tried’ and ‘once’.  If he’s what you promote to General levels, I don’t acknowledge your army as mine.  Let me in that cell.”

“No need,” James growled, now somewhat sorry he stopped her.  He stepped over the fallen creep and crushed the lock to the bars in his metal hand, aware of the painful crunching sound.  He stepped in and knelt by a bruised Clint.  “Play along,” he whispered, then louder, “Honor Guardsman Clinton, are you battle capable?”

“Zarda nuts again?” Clint slurred into his ear as he helped the pounded man up.

“Yeah.  She brief you?”

“Yup.”

Just then, Axe of the Faith Boothby walked upon the scene, and registered his son on the ground and Darcy Lewis staring at two prisoners in an open cell.

“Soldier, grab her!” he ordered.

“But,”

“If she has regained her Goddesshood she will easily break free, if not, we must break _her_.”

James felt his brain do a spinning barrel roll into crash and burn territory, but before he could mentally flatline, Clint launched out of his arms, knocking Darcy away from the soldier.

“Clint!” she screamed from the floor.

“She had fooled you! Take them to the arena, and make that one watch.”  He pointed at James.  James could almost hear the Zola-apperition’s voice ‘you didn’t stop it, you were too late, too slow, not good enough.’

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In a large arena, Darcy had been, of course, tied to a pillar.  These people never had any originality, and it was starting to irritate her.   Clint was dumped on the ground in front of her, and she saw the place balconies might have been seal off with thick glass.  Then the penny dropped.

“Clint, remember what I said about these people and sonics?”

“Yeah.”  He panted heavily.  For some reason they’d given him back his bracer, not that it was useable after that useless attempt at back handing the gas ball away.  It pissed him off.  “What about it?”

“This is your typical sacrificing the princess to the beast set up, but no beast.  Natasha told me once sound waves could mess with-”

“What does that matter!” he yelled, a second before really processing her words, a low enough frequency, that could, in theory, set off all his basest urges.  The Hyde Pitch, Tony had called it when he and Nat and Clint had gotten to spitballing after he shared what Stane had used to get the Arc Reactor.  And Clint’s dad, from whom he got half his DNA had been the worst kind of Hyde, only his potion was alcoholic.  Clint stomped on his rising anger, and pulled out his wallet.  He was aware of Darcy pleading with him as he pulled the dart mag, no bigger than a few credit cards stacked together, but he tuned her out, it would only hit all the buttons he had resolved to never let be hit.  He slid out a mini sonic, the high pitch should cancel the low, but he needed point blank high impact.  That wasn’t usually a problem.  Point blank for him was nearly fifty yards.  But he had no way of setting it off close enough to his ear.  Unless….  Looking Darcy in the eye he smiled at her, and bit the little violet tip.

Pain lanced through his skull, he lost his balance and fell to the floor.  When he came to, Darcy’s lips were moving but he heard nothing.  Slowly, he climbed to his feet, staggered, and hit the floor with his knees.  He took a red explosive dart out of the slot and flicked it in an under hand trick maneuver at the ropes on her wrists.  She yanked out of them as soon as they were weakened, stormed over to him and paused, like she was shaking something off, she helped him up, and the doors opened.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

James had watched in horror as the function of the sound proofing was explained, and the sound triggered in the room.  Clint seemed so cold and distant, not the man who playfully called him Winter, as if the blood didn’t matter, the man who traveled via duct because it provided the best spitball vantage, who wanted one of pretty much every breed of dog.  He seemed like the Soldier.  James fought the urge to yell in vain, as Clint drew a pack of mini darts, he’d been so proud to show off.  Then his eyes widened as Clint _bit_ one.  The sudden collapse brought everyone else to their feet in outrage.  It just made James sad.  Then the struggle to get upright, and he could read Darcy’s lips as she cussed Clint Barton to seven different hells and back.  Everyone was so focused on her rage, only James caught the small flick of the wrist and the tiny pop of an explosive that let Darcy rip free.  The older scumbag, the one who fathered the idiot he’d saved Darcy from killing, hit the switch to end the sound.  Escorted back to the doors of the Arena, James analyzed the two of them as they limped out.

“Princess, Lovkach?”

“I’m fine, James.  Clint, on the other hand, took out his own ears.”

“They were putting you at risk.  I’d pull my good arm off if it meant saving you.  I’m pretty sure he feels the same.”  Visually signaling Clint with codes he knew he’d taught Talia, he moved to examine the archer’s ears.  No blood was good, but the fluid leaking….  “He needs Cho.  The recovery bay is his best bet to salvage some hearing and any vestibular that isn’t totally gone.  He’s gonna have a helluva recovery period where he can’t stand on tall stuff.”

“Then get us to Cho.”  Darcy’s voice was ice cold and furious.

James grabbed Scumbag the Elder and growled in his face.  “You will take us to the Tower, or I will deafen you myself for what you made him do.  And it will be bloody.”

The man wet himself, and James tossed him into a wall.  A wall that exploded a few feet down the way.  Iron Man stepped through the gap, Captain America beside him, shield up.

“Terminator, good to see you, although I’m not sure I should be seeing this _much_ of you, did I interrupt something?”

“Clint needs Cho.  He deafened himself on a sonic dart.”

“How in the…”

“He bit it.”

“That’ll do it.  Tell Merida I’m taking him to the ‘jet.”  Clint flipped him off.  “You said he was deaf!”

“He is, but there’s a high likelihood that if you look at him you’re calling him a name.”  James signaled Clint of Tony’s intentions, and Clint nodded.

“Buck,” Steve started.

“Don’t you even start Rogers.”

“I was gonna say I’m glad you’re ok.  And Karen said to tell Darcy that she and Clint should stop by for a family dinner, since diving headlong out a window is the equivalent of a super-soldier proposal.”

“That mean you’re engaged to half of Europe, and all of New York?”

“Shaddup, I only do it because Karen made me stop BASE jumping.”

“Uh huh, and the time in St Remy?”

“That was two stories and I needed the ang- ok I just like jumping out of windows.”

“Well I don’t.”

“That’s why it counts.”

“Unless you don’t want to be engaged to me, Barnes, stop arguing with the man, and ask him if they found my shoes.”  Darcy poked him in the arm.  “Answer is yes by the way, as soon as a judge who will do a tripartite ceremony is found.”

“Love you, Princess,” he said.

“Of course you do, I’m lovable.  Now shoes.”

“I have retrieved them, little sister!” boomed a voice that had half the cultists cowering and the others salivating.

“Finish him, Zarda!” yelled someone.

“Okie dokie,” Darcy chirped, obviously no longer caring about the pretense as she skipped up to Thor.  “What was the full name of the Archduke whose assassination kicked off World War I?”

“I yield, little sister, what was his name?”

Turning back to the confused cultists she yelled, “He yielded, now shut your pie-holes.”  Turning back to Thor she recited “Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria.  Now, shoes?”

He laughed as he handed over her Vans and the rainbow toesocks he had to have brought from the tower.  She used him for balance as she tried to pull them on, when James knelt and helped her.  She knew it came from an awful place, but his complete willingness to kneel before her stirred up something warm in her lady zone.  She wondered if that made her a bad person, but the molten silver in his eyes when he looked up from finishing her laces drove that thought straight into the circular file.  He scooped her up again, despite the shoes, and whispered low in her ear.

“I want to know what made your eyes dilate like that when we get back, and then I want to do that until you need me so bad you order me into bed.”

“When Clint is out.  Nothing sans pants until Clint is home.”

“Agreed.  I want him to see whatever it is, and how pretty you look when it happens.”

Darcy coughed at the sudden mental image of a Darcy sandwich with Super Sniper bread, and said, loudly and firmly, “Take me home or lose me forever, James.”  The Avengers present laughed, and Steve led them out to the Quinjet.  Several cultists tried to appeal to her only to get a cold look.  Nat looked up from her first aid on Clint long enough to reassure herself, and went back to fussing at him in a mish mash of American, Army, and Russian sign language.  Darcy sat next to him and hauled James in tight.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Later, after Cho had regenerated the membranes and small bones that she could, they watched a soundless, captioned Lilo and Stitch in Clint’s hospital room (it being a Stark built hospital room the bed fit all three of them).  Clint showed them the signs for "little and broken, but still good, yes still good."


	32. Fixing and Fantasies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly smut. There's some plot, but only like, 12%. Maybe 15%.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Generalkaty, Liebekatze, uconnhuskiesfan_wintershockship, and as always, to my muse, naruturd.
> 
> I wasn't sure how to divide this into a non smut plot point wrap up chap and a smut chap, so, here, have 3k+ of chapter.

Cho’s recovery bay worked miracles, simply speaking.  Clint had a few weeks where sounds louder than a whisper were painful to the newly grown in eardrums, but after that his hearing was, well not back to normal, that was to be expected.  Tony had told him via holo-text while he was being scanned in prep he was lucky he hadn’t caused more irreparable damage.  As it was, he had destroyed his eardrum, all three bones in both ears, and shredded his cochlea, with minor damage to the vestibular nerve.  Anyone without access to Cho’s experimental recovery bay and the tower’s arc reactor required to power it would have been written off as totally deaf.  Even with the bay, Clint’s cochlea still had damage.  He stumbled (sometimes quite literally) through the motions of life while recovering until Jarvis flashed him a warning light, alerting him to Tony.

“You’re being stubborn and reckless with your health, Clint.  And as hypocritical as that is coming from me, I’m still worried.  I worked out a completely in canal aid for you, it won’t show on spysassin stuff, and you can ask Jarvis to turn it into a com for missions so there’s no feedback problems.  I also flew in the best vestibular PT/OT team.  I do not want to hear that you’ve fallen, _again_ , in my perfectly OSHA compliant tower.”

“Gee, ultimatum much Stark?”

“I ultimatum because I care,” Tony said.  “I’m not good at mushy.  So I overcompensate.  Take the damn aids and the therapy?  I’m having those things that happen in your torso but are really in your brain.”

“Emotions?”

“Those, I don’t like them so take the help so they can go away.”

“This is simultaneously the worst and the most effective use of emotional blackmail I’ve ever heard.  I’ll do it.”

Tony fist pumped and Clint rolled his eyes.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Darcy got some strange looks from her friends after the whole Zarda cult thing, but after explain that, yes she’d told Thor when she could, got the real scoop on the actual Zarda, and filled in Clint after the second time she’d been stopped by them in the street to get more constant back-up, they all eased up.  James spent more time sleeping now, mostly because in addition to his needed REM he had some memory chasing to do.  They teased and flirted in the halls, stopped in to have dinner with Clint in his recovery room, and then his floor, but it never went much farther than goodnight kisses until Clint surprised them with a cake Tony’s ordered him from Charm City Cakes newest bakery, in Manhattan.  The tipsy turvy style layers depicted a sadly battered sky scraper shape tilting to one side, as a little sculpted Hawkeye stood even on the top.  The windows had letters in them, but you had to circle the cake to see them all.  They read: Congrats on Being Officially Less Deaf.  Darcy almost squealed before she remembered the sensitivity issues he’d still been dealing with and clapped her hands over her mouth.

“Nah, Spark, squee away, Stark got the bug in the CIC fixed, it doesn’t hurt to listen to his music…any more than Mettalica and Black Sabbath are painful normally.  I figure that means nothing short of a bomb’s gonna hurt.”

Darcy squee’d loudly and peppered his face in kisses.

“It’s true, you’re clear?” James asked hesitantly.

“As I’m ever gonna be.  I need someone to cover any shifts for the next few weeks while I get back in practice, but as far as living a normal life, yeah.”

“Don’t worry about shifts,” James told him.  “I’m not you, but I ain’t half bad with a bow.  We did a double-up with Mad Jack Churchill for a few months and he bet half his squad his whole chocolate ration for the rest of the year he could turn me into a bowman before we left.  He was, let’s call it motivated.  A costume change to add in a mask and cover the arm, and I could pass.  Nobody needs to know ‘Hawkeye’ is out.”

“Tony got to you, didn’t he,” Clint squinted.

“No, Nat got to both of us.  She’s terrifying, and I used ta be the worlds most feared assassin.”

“Ok, but you aren’t taking Vera.  I just got her calibrated.”

“Stark made me a bow that will help self-adjust to wind and rain.  I need all the help I can get to be anywhere near as good as you.”

“As long as that _thing_ never makes it into my armory.”  Clint’s particular pet peeve about over-modernizing bows sets off giggles from his partners.

“It won’t,” James swears.  “But if you’re all healed up, I’ve been waiting too long to get an answer, Princess.”

Clint scrunches his brow, he was pretty sure that was a nickname James had laid off since the Zarda thing, and Darcy is rapidly reddening, but before he can intervene she explains.

“James noticed a, thing, during the whole rescue part that you were evac’d for, and I told him I’d tell him once you were better.”

“Her eyes got so damn big, and her cheeks and neck did that flush that’s just so…I wanted to know what caused it so I could do it again.”

“Well, it’s not something I’d really considered, and I know it probably comes from someplace horrible, but, when you kneeling for me was just an act it didn’t, but when you did it so easily and you didn’t have to, well, you kneeling like that…it did something for me.  The same way Clint always asking before he kisses me does something for me.”

“You like it when I kneel?”  It wasn’t a judgement, just a question.

“Yes.”  Darcy’s voice came out small and helpless.  _That_ , James decided, would not do.  Nothing about Darcy was small or helpless.  He moved up in front of her, pushing the line of personal space and tilted her head up to look at him.

“Do you like knowing I’d do anything to make you happy?” he kept eye contact as she nodded.  “Then why do you look sad?”

“I don’t want what they did to you coming into our home!  I want what we have to be ours, not theirs,” she protested hotly.  Then, quieter, “I don’t want to use you like they did.”

“Darcy, Angelface, I see how you did the math but you made some assumptions that aren’t accurate.  I was kneeling for dames long before I ever heard of Hydra.”

Her look of shock was so worth letting his own history out.

“See we didn’t use ta have a fancy pill a dame could take ta keep her outa ‘the family way’ ya see.  And French letters were expensive and not as effective as they could be.  But that didn’t stop us from finding ways to have fun.  Some people chanced it but I never did. Wasn’t willing to get a girl in trouble when I knew I wouldn’t be happy married to her, and this was back before I knew I could, well, with two, like what we have.  So I found other ways.”

“Really?”  Darcy sounded curious, not offended.

“Well, yeah.”

“Show me?”  He smiled lazily at her.

“Well, once I was sure what she wanted, I’d ask if she’d like to take a walk in the Park with me, and there are lots of places that are hard to see from the main paths, and we’d find a tree,”

“A tree?”

“Yeah, to brace on.  Hey, Lovkach, come be a tree for her will ya?”  Clint caught on to what he meant and stood right behind Darcy.

“I gotcha Spark,” he whispered in her ear.

“And then,” James dropped to his knees.  “I’d start real slow, work my way up her legs like this.”  He rubbed his hands along the backs of Darcy’s calves, and she was suddenly intensely aware of the fact she’d worn thigh highs under her dress that day, waiting to see if he’d find the black lace at the top of the beige stockings.  He did, but it took what felt like hours under his careful ministrations for him to reach her dress’s hem.  He looked up at her in silent supplication, hands on the outside of her knees.  She nodded, and his fingers, metal and flesh, slid up the fronts of her thighs, curling inward to stroke her in a sensitive spot mid-thigh.  She could tell when he hit the lace, the molten silver-blue look in his eyes that shot to hers told her his opinion.  She smiled and pressed one leg out a bit, nudging his hands back into action.  It broke him out of the trance a bit and he kept talking.

“So, this was a lot harder in the days of garters, but I’m not complainin’.  Tell me if you want me to stop.”  Darcy nodded.

“So, then it’s just a matter of pulling these down,” he tugged at her panties, these she had bought for her boys appreciation, and it seemed to work if the way they both took in sharp breaths when red bullseye on the crotch landed face up when James helped her shimmy out of them.  After a moment’s pause, he continued, “and then I just gotta find what works.  What works for you, Darcy-Doll?”

“Hnngh.”

“If she’s incoherent you’re doing it right,” supplied Clint.  “Try a little oral action.  Unless you object, Spark?”

“No objections, none whatsoever.”

“She’s gone verbal again, Lovkach, think I should fix that?”

“Go for it, I have her spotted.”

James dove in like a man dying of thirst, lapping and sucking and kneading her thighs until she squirmed to push more firmly against him.  His approach was more vigorous than Clint’s languid teasing, but she was still reduced to wailing like a cat in heat as he plunged his tongue into her and flicked that spot just inside.  He pulled back when she started to shake.  “Y’know, it’s the damndest thing, that spot, with a little variation in placement, ‘course, never fails.  Ever.  Not once.”

“Move over Masters and Johnson,” Clint whistled.  “James Barnes discovered the G-spot _pre-War_.”

“Nngh, more.”

“Demanding little thing, aren’t ya Spark?  I’ve got her, can you get the blankets off the bed.”  James smirked and went to do that as Clint hoisted Darcy up in his arms.  He laid her on his bed, admiring the dark fall of her hair against the lavender sheets, and she snaked an arm up to grab him, pulling him down beside her muttering about sandwiches, a thing that would have thrown him, except he knew how Darcy thought.

“What now, Angel?” James asked her, but despite her lust filled eyes being fully open there was no verbal response, instead she pulled him in close to her, pausing a moment to whisper against his lips.

“May I?”

“Do whatever you want Angel.  If it’s not fun for me, I’ll tell you.”  She proceeded to kiss him with such raw passion his mind went blank before he started to kiss back.  His erection poked into her thigh, and she grabbed Clint’s hand from her breast and moved it lower.

“You want me to rub him off, Spark?  Gotta admit I’ve been wanting to, but maybe we should have fewer clothes?” Darcy hummed and bit James’ lower lip a little before pulling away and sitting up so Clint could unzip her.

Divested of clothing, the trio got back in place.  She’d cooled down enough to speak, so Darcy made use of that to blurt out a major fantasy.

“I want to watch you two make out while I play with you, not to get you to cum, just to keep you hard, and then when you need to fuck so bad it hurts, I want one of you in my mouth and the other in my pussy and I want all that really, really badly.”

“We can do that I think,” Clint smiled at the other man.  “You game Winter?”

“I think so, Lovkach, but I’ve never gotten that far with a fella, so go easy on me.”

“Of course.”  Clint moved slowly and cupped James’ face in his hands.  “I figured something out in that cell,” he said.  “I love you.  I love both of you.  And I’ll be as gentle as you need.” The kiss was gentle, excruciatingly so, and with the knowledge their girl was watching them, not nearly enough.  James pushed into the kiss, deepening it, and he was rewarded by the feeling of Darcy’s small but strong hand on him, stroking, teasing, every so often dipping down to cup his sack, but drawing back when he felt like one more stroke would send him over.  He’d thought he’d have to signal her, but she seemed to know.  He’d have been happy with just that, his fella’s tongue dancing with his, his gal’s hands keeping him on that sweet precipice, but Clint made a deep in the chest sound, part moan and part whine.

“Do you need something, Clint?” Darcy asked perfectly innocently as she squeezed James cock and suddenly he was one with his guy in the need to make love to her.

“You know I do, Darce,” Clint glanced at James, “and I think he does too.  Who do you want where?”

“From what I got earlier, James never got a chance to sex up a vag, and I know you didn’t get the full Lewis Brain Extraction Blow job, so let’s fix that.”

Regaining a certain amount of speech, James made the quick inquiry as to condoms, Clint grabbed the new box he’d bought when he and Darcy really became a thing and helped him roll it on.  Recalling the awkward first attempt she’d made at this maneuver, Darcy suggested Clint help him out, causing both men’s eyes to widen as she turned and presented her upraised ass.

Swallowing thickly, Clint put a hand on James’ shaft and helped him angle to the correct entrance.  The way he twitched upon entering her reminded Clint of his first time with Darcy. Swatting her lightly on the butt, he reprimanded her. “No teasing, he’s new.”

“Not,” Darcy moaned as another inch went in. “Teasing.  I went celibate during your rehab, and the battery powered options don’t appeal as much when you have,” another moan, “two hotties waiting.  This is involuntary.”  She let out a long shuddering breath as James sank all the way in.  “Fuck, but I got tight.  I know you two aren’t that different in size but oh I feel so full.  Fuck, fuck, I need to cum, I’m so close, James, please, fuck me hard, use me however you need, just fuck me.”

“Seems,” James grunted, “like if you’re gonna keep your mouth all filthy, we might as well dirty it up a little more.  You did say you wanted that.  Do you still want that?”

“Yes, both of you, fuck me, fuck both ends at once, damnit just fuck me!”

Clint moved around to face her, sinking back a little on knees that bracketed her body so she could easily reach him without risking James’ position in her.  She started in on him with a surprising amount of vigor, but then he saw she was using the bobbing motion to rock herself on James’ cock, much good it did her, as he kept with her, limiting the amount of movement.  She whined on his cock, never pulling off, but using the vibration to get him closer to ready to pop.

“Darce, I’m gonna take the reins here, ok?”

Darcy bobbed her yes.

“James, I’m pretty sure you know how to do this even if you haven’t or don’t remember.  Darce made a pretty clear request we fuck her silly, so that’s what I think we should do.  I want you to fuck her so she’s got all of me in her mouth, but doesn’t care about the size because you’re pounding into her too fast and hard for her to think.  You wanna?”

“Fuck yes,” he moaned, and bucked into Darcy’s pussy hard, and she tipped forward onto Clint, moaning loudly.  His pace increased and so did the volume of Darcy’s muffled moans and whines.  Each stroke pushed her further down on Clint’s cock, and he struggled with the urge to fuck back up into her mouth, until he saw her come apart, while James kept pumping.  He stroked her hair and her hand lifted just enough to push on his to tell him he should.

Darcy’s brain was on fire, between the hot fullness in her pussy and the gentle way Clint helped her find the right pace.  She must have come two or three times by now by neither man made a move to stop, until a particularly hard thrust had her deep throating Clint.  He let out a choked sound and stuttered out a warning, but Darcy only drew back a little, sucking hard and swirling around the tip with her tongue.  With a yell, he let loose a stream of cum, which she sucked down quickly, ready for the next jet.  She milked him dry and when he pulled away, she darted her tongue out to lick the last of the semen from his softening shaft.  She took a moment to revel in his dazed look, until James started pumping again.

James loved watching the look on his fella’s face as he drove their girl over the edge, he counted the number of times she tightened hard on him and waited until the third to really drive into her.  Clint’s eyes were wide and blown when his head snapped up to lock eyes with James, they didn’t need a single word for James to know Darcy was working Clint over but good, every second he could tell what was happening, as Clint tried to warn her, and she, in true Darcy fashion, decided warnings were for quitters and took him right over the edge.  James felt himself getting close, aided by the way Clint slumped back all boneless and sated.  After appreciating the sight, he drove into Darcy’s sweet, hot, tightness with renewed vigor, pulling another few hard squeezes out of her, one that seemed to last forever as she cried his name repeatedly, and pushed him so close that the next thrust had _him_ calling _her_ name as fingers tightened on her hips.

He came to with Clint gently washing him off and Darcy lazily stroking his scar.  His loves snuggled into him and they fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter ends it, get ready.  
> Tumblr: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
> Patreon: http://patreon.com/bairnsidhe
> 
> For the less medically informed, the cochlea is the part of the inner ear that maintains balance. You can learn to function normally with a damaged set, but Clint's going to be doing a fair amount of falling before he gets there.
> 
> Charm City Cakes is a real bakery headed by Duff Goldman, famous for really out there cakes, and they had a show Ace of Cakes for a while. In RL they have locations in Baltimore and LA, but I'm sure in the Marvel'verse they saw a niche in NYC.
> 
> Mad Jack Churchill was a real soldier (Lt. Col.) in WWII, who actually wore a kilt, and carried a Scottish broadsword and a Welsh longbow into battle. He is credited with the last kill in a war made with a longbow. He stated that in his opinion the purpose of command was to simultaneously demoralize the enemy and convince your own troops that nothing is too crazy to work. I can totally see him drilling Bucky in the fine art of archery until he was a decent shot.
> 
> SPOILER ALERT:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> James' mellow voice crooned the song as Clint's hands moved sensually through the shapes of the words, and Darcy's heart melted. If she didn't already love these men, this would have done it.


	33. Little, and Broken, but Still Good.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is it guys. The end. I hope you like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This goes out to so many people, everyone who commented, who left a kudo, who went and read another thing I wrote. I'm not sure I have room in the notes to thank everyone. So assume if you made it this far, this is for you. I foresee more works, such as fixing AoU (so many things wrong, so many) and a 'verse compliant Civil War fic. For now though, I'm going to try to focus on some original writing.

They fell rather easily into domestic bliss.  Clint worked on getting back into Avenge-ing shape, and James took his slot on the team, with his left arm covered in a new poly-carbonate mesh Tony made, with self-healing ceramic scale-maile over it in a pretty good approximation of Clint’s old Circus outfit.  He still teased Clint about the mask design, also taken from the old Carson’s outfit.  Darcy continued to be a scientist wrangler, although her clothes and personal items began migrating to Clint’s floor.  For that matter, so did James’ things.  Most nights they spent together, either marathoning movies from the Big List of Things You Missed that Steve had already seen, or having marathon sex.

By the time Clint was ready to take back the bow, James had gotten a pretty good feel for how to be an Avenger, so Tony remade his tac gear to be a little less “bondage dom, I mean really, how kinky is Hydra?”  It mixed in elements of his old Howlies uniform, like being a dark blue instead of black, and worked just as well if not better than the old one.  He also got a StarkTech prosthetic, which functioned better and didn’t degrade the neural bonds.  The basic frame was much lighter weight, and he could easily change out the cladding on the outside himself, since the plates had been replaced by a thin layer of polymorphic synthetic ‘skin’ that relayed information to the nerves, and therefore the whole thing was less complicated to deal with.  His favorite combat cladding was the one with his Howlies flash badge in white over the old Soviet red star.  His preferred civvie look was the one Steve had painted to look almost like real skin.  Stark swore he could make a synthskin sleeve, but no success so far.

The first couple missions went great, mostly because they were Hydra mop-up ops and James could have done them in his sleep.  Then there was an incident involving a bilgesnipe, and some kid reporter got a pretty decent shot of his face and the arm.  It ran in the Bugle, for once bumping Spidey below the fold.  Several people in high places called for his head, including one General Ross, which had Bruce looking a little green.  Pepper was as close to panic as she ever got, when Darcy breezed into her office in black velvet pants and a suede blazer the color of her lipstick over what Pepper was fairly sure was a gray Army tee.  Behind her, looking a little lost, were an impeccably dressed blind man, and a longer haired man, also in a suit.

“Guys, Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries.  Pepper, these are Nelson and Murdock, they just opened a firm.” She gestured to each man to make it clear who was who.

“It’s not exactly open yet, Darcy,” Murdock said.

“Hush, Matt, I’m working.”  Her paired engagement bracelets jangled as she shushed him.  Darcy turned back to Pepper.  “When we first got James I foresaw some legal stuff, but fortunately, I met Matt and Foggy about a year before, when they were wee little interns at a firm that was trying to steal patent rights from Jane.  Matt has a soul, though, and threw the whole thing by telling a water cooler I happened to be nearby about the way to close the loophole the sharks were using.  I called them, and Matt started prepping for this day.  We need some signatures, but they have the whole thing in the legal bag.  Also, say the word and the social media storm is prepped for launch.”

“Darcy, I don’t know what to say…you can get Ross off my back?”

“Nelson and Murdock can, I’m handling the masses and triple J.”  An evil smile emerged.  “God I love my job.”

Darcy got a promotion (mainly a pay bump and the right to fire SI interns who worked with the Scientist Squad) and Nelson and Murdock got a paycheck enough to pay rent on the office they wanted for a year.

A year went by, people came to accept that the Winter Soldier was as much an Avenger as Cap, and James and Darcy and Clint slowly moved in together, although Darcy kept a room on Thor’s floor for times when she knew she’d need to be getting Jane up early.  The search for legal three-way marriage involving two men and a woman dead ended at a country called Wakanda, and not even Tony could get them a visa.  So they settled on a ceremony, close friends and family only.  Darcy even managed to track down a ninety-four-year-old Rebecca Barnes-Proctor to invite, along with her daughter, Jaime.

 The set up was just a large party, all three of them had tried to back out of wedding planning, so their proxies, Jane, Nat, and Karen took over.  The party atmosphere kept everyone circulating, congratulating the triad and drinking their celebratory drinks of choice.  Jarvis let out a ringing chime, like a fork hitting a champagne glass, only louder, and a spotlight came up on the Iron Man rig that had been cordoned off.  Pepper, Betty, Nat, Jane, and Karen stood on the raised platform.  Music started playing, and Darcy fist pumped as she recognized the song.

  
“Another June, another wedding  
We are gathered here today   
To watch three who chose to be a family  
Give promises away”  Pepper’s voice was clear and high.  
  
“I do, I do," all the women joined her.  
"The sun is shining  
I reach out to hold your hands  
We understand  
the kind of choices lie ahead”   
  
“Every morning, choose to love something about them,” Betty’s voice was warm and sweet.

“Every day, remember who you chose to be,” Nat had a surprisingly nice messo.

“Every evening, choose to say the things that haven't yet been said  
Then go to bed  
And choose to love the ones you’re with,” Karen’s alto resonated firmly.  
  
“Another autumn follows summer  
And the skies are dark with rain  
I was so secure in the assumption  
He was the one who had to change.”  Jane was obviously getting some modulation help from Jarvis, since Darcy knew she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.  It still sounded good.   
  
“I do, I do,” all the women sang again,  
“Wish I could take back   
All the things that I regret  
The accumulated damage that I do   
When I forget to...”  The floodlights on them faded into individual spots, this time colored.  Gold, violet, red, pale blue, yellow.  
  
“Every morning, choose to love something about them,” Betty’s violet spotlight faded into green.

“Every day, remember who you choose to be,” Nat’s red spotlight gave her a bloody appearance, but shifted until it was a black light, causing her silver-white dress to glow, angelic-looking.

“Every evening, choose to say the things that haven't yet been said,” Jane’s plain blue morphed into a galaxy of colors

“Then go to bed, and choose to love the ones you’re with,” Karen’s yellow flashed red, white, and blue before returning to yellow.

“Sometimes we fall apart,” Pepper’s gold light faded into the same blood red as Natasha’s had been.  
“Before we pull it back together,” her spotlight went back to gold.

“Do we choose to let it go,” Jane’s light dropped back to blue.  
“Or do we struggle through the weather?”  The galaxy lights came back. 

The women stood tall and proud, as they sang together again.

“When we've lived in different worlds  
We have to wonder if it's better  
To appreciate the changes  
Or forget about forever”  
  
“Another year, another challenge  
There's the distance  
There's the wait  
There's a thousand aggravations that keep getting in the way” Pepper took the song in a much more personal way than the original, and Darcy knew it was her history speaking.  
  
“I do, I do I told you once   
I know I'd do it all again  
Because I meant it when we married  
And I've meant it ever since” Betty and Karen slayed in the duet.

“Every morning, choose to love something about them,” Betty’s light faded away.  
“Every day, remember who you chose to be,” Karen’s light went black.  
“Every evening, choose to say the things that haven't yet been said,” Jane’s galaxy winked out.  
“Then go to bed, and choose to love the ones you’re with,” Pepper’s golden light vanished, leaving Nat alone on the stage in the white halo of her glowing dress.

“Lyubite, te ya sam s,” The Russian translation didn’t quite match the song, but that didn’t matter to any of the three currently hugging.

The lights snapped off to a rousing applause.  Darcy reached to hold her boy’s hands, but they’d vanished in the moment after they released her.  She looked around and saw Tony standing on a bar.

“Everyone, in light of the well-known love of music harbored by the Bride, our musical entertainment is not over.  Please look towards the end of the bar away from me, yes I know it’s a struggle,” he got a laugh.  “And give your attention to the Grooms.”

Darcy saw James adjust a stage microphone over his ear so it better picked up from his cheek.  She was a bit shocked when he sang with no music behind his vocals, it pushed a level of rawness into his voice that she could see mirrored in Clint’s eyes as he did a sign language translation.

“You can have my heart, but it isn't new  
It's been used and broken and only comes in blue  
It's been down a long road and it got dirty on the way,  
But if I give it to you, can you make it clean?  
Wash the pain away  
  
You can have my heart   
If you don't mind broken things  
You can have my love  
If you don't mind these tears  
But I heard that you make old things new  
So I'll give these pieces all to you  
If you want it  
You can have my heart  
  
So beyond repair, with nothing I could do  
Tried to fix it myself, but it was only worse, when I got through  
Then you right walked into my darkness, and you speak words so sweet  
And you held me like a child til my frozen tears, just fell at your feet”

James' mellow voice crooned the song as Clint's hands moved sensually through the shapes of the words, and Darcy's heart melted.  If she didn't already love these men, this would have done it.

“So you can have my heart   
If you don't mind broken things  
You can have my love  
If you don't mind these tears  
But I heard that you make old things new  
So I'll give these pieces all to you  
If you want it  
You can have my heart  
  
But I heard that you make old things new  
So I'll give these pieces all to you  
If you want it you can have my heart

I hope you don't mind broken things”

Darcy walk towards them and grabbed their hands, and they completed the circle easily.  Leaning in, the bumped their heads together.  She spoke clearly, wanting to make sure they heard her meaning, and the stage mic picked up her words.

“You are my family. I found you, all on my own. We’re little, and broken, but still good.” She looked at them, and pronounced it firmly.  “Yah. Still good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs are Choose, by Heather Dale, and Broken Things, the song for which the fic is named, by Ryan Kelly.
> 
> The Russian line isn't a direct translation. The original was 'love the man I'm with', Nat sings 'love the ones I'm myself with'
> 
> You guys know where to find me.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me here: bairnsidhe.tumblr.com
> 
>  
> 
> I'm picking up the habit of teasing the next chapter, so here's a snippet of what's to come:  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> “You know, I don’t get the fuss and bother over mutants, they have a tendency to save our lives.”


End file.
